The action of added insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I) and dihydrotestosterone (DHT) on steroid 5 alpha-reductase (5 alpha R) activity was studied using primary cultures of rat or human scrotal skin fibroblasts. Agents were added to cultured cells (2 x 10(5) cells) for 2 days, and enzyme activity was measured by the percent conversion of [3H] testosterone to DHT over a 4-h period in the absence of fetal calf serum or other growth factors. DHT, but not testosterone, at 10(-7) M significantly increased 5 alpha R activity (rat, 1.5 +/- 0.3% to 3.0 +/- 0.4%; human, 7.6 +/- 1.7% to 11.4 +/- 2.9%; P < 0.01). IGF-I (10(-9)-6.4 x 10(-9) M), but not IGF-II (10(-9)-10(-8) M) or insulin (10(-9)-10(-7) M), increased enzyme activity in a dose-related fashion [i.e. 1.5 +/- 0.5 to 10 +/- 2 in rat and 6.0 +/- 1.1 to 9.8 +/- 1.6% (P < 0.01) in human cells]. No change in cell numbers was observed in any experiment. Since the effect of IGF-I was about 100 times that of androgen, we studied the possibility that androgen induction of the enzyme activity could be via IGF-I production. Addition of a monoclonal antibody against IGF-I significantly reduced the effect of DHT, and simultaneous addition of a specific IGF-I receptor antibody blocked the expected induction of 5 alpha R activity (control, 4.9 +/- 0.5; DHT, 8.0 +/- 1.9; DHT plus IGF-I receptor antibody, 3.7 +/- 0.4%). No effect on 3 alpha-reduction of [3H]DHT to 3 alpha-androstanediol was detected in separate experiments. These studies indicate that IGF-I may be an important regulator of skin 5 alpha R activity and, thus, may influence DHT formation. The previously known androgen induction of this peripheral steroidogenic enzyme may be via paracrine/autocrine production of an IGF-I-type growth factor.


Library performance measurement is one of a strategy to evaluate utilization of library resources. The objective of this study was to identify indicators needed to measure the performance and to design an counting system measurement at Open Service at National Library of Indonesia.  The measurement indicators were based on ISO 11620:2008 consisting of 45 indicators. It was selected 10 indicators: 1) percentage of required titles in the collection (RTC); 2) shelving accuracy (SA); 3)  staff per capita (LS); 4) collection turnover (CT); 5) loans per capita (LPC); 6) in-library use per capita (IUC); 7) library visits per capita (LVC); 8) percentage of target population reached (PTPR); 9) user satisfaction (AUS); 10)  user services staff as a percentage of total staff (USSPTS).  The indicators were selected through four stages: 1) selecting indicators related to activities in the Indonesia National Library and removing indicators related to activities that are not conducted in the institution; 2) removing indicators related to cost; 3)  identifying and selecting indicators related to vision and mission by the questionnaire; 4) analizing the results of the questionnaire and setting the indicators that have an average value of the results greater than 0 as an  selected indicator. The results of managements attitude that required the a performance counting system. System design was developed based on the system requirements and management's needs. The system that was able to process data  into information of performance. The system was integrated with the integrated national library system (INLIS) and the data that were not available in INLIS were manually input. Steps of system developing were defining use case, description use case, activity diagram, class diagram, sequence diagram, object role/relational mapping and entity relationship diagram.   Keywords: Information System, ISO 11620, Library, Performance Indicators


In this paper, we evaluate the performance of single- and multi-antenna multi-carrier code division multiple access (MC-CDMA) downlink (base station to mobile terminal) systems in single- and multi-cell environments. We first propose a minimum mean square error (MMSE) filter with a Gaussian approximation for a single input single output (SISO) MC-CDMA downlink system. Then, we apply it to a SIMO (single input multiple output) system with a conventional turbo coding. Furthermore, we compare the performance of SISO (1×1) and SIMO (1×2) MC-CDMA systems with that of a multiple input multiple output (MIMO) (2 x 2) system employing space-time turbo coded modulation (STTuCM) in a multi-cell environment with 7 cells by computer simulation. Based on the computer simulation results, it is found that the considered MIMO system can achieve twofold capacity with the same transmission power in the multi-cell environment.


Thermoacoustic engines (TAEs) are devices that convert thermal energy input to sound energy output which can be used to drive different mechanisms. TAEs are a promising technology since they are environmentally friendly and require low maintenance and costs. The main component of the TAE device is the stack which is a solid porous material that allows heat transfer between the fluid and stack plates. Thermoacoustic engines take heat from a hot reservoir and converts some of the heat energy inside the stack to sound energy while dumping the excess to the heat sink. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the stack length and position using the experimental apparatus as well as the numerical modelling. Experimentations are conducted alongside the numerical analysis. The numerical model is governed by the non-isothermal conjugated heat flow of the unsteady Navier-stokes equations. Pressure and velocity are monitored at different locations along the resonator. Experiments conducted showed that the stack position and length have an influence on the efficiency of the TAE. For both lengths tested, the efficiency increased as the center position of the stack moved further away from the pressure anti-node, however this was not observed in the numerical analysis, as the maximum output was obtained with stack placed at 0.3L from the closed end of the tube. Moreover, the longer stack of 9cm gave a better performance than the shorter stack of 4.5cm.


The study investigated the relationship between the expressed meaning and value of work and satisfaction of a group of school educators. The main objective of the current study was to explicate what teachers' express as making work meaningful, and what it is that gives them satisfaction as school teachers and also how that perception affects their performance. The relationship between the expressed meaning of work and job satisfaction will be dealt with, and in attempting to explain the concept of Job satisfaction, theories such as those by Herzberg and Maslow were employed to aid in answering the above mentioned questions. Some of the factors which have been identified in the literature and are seen as contributors of job satisfaction of teachers are motivation, workplace conditions, support from learners and their parents, job security as well as interpersonal relations and good social standing with other colleagues. While there may be no evidence to draw a causal relationship between pay, meaning of work and job satisfaction, pay has been widely studied in relation to job satisfaction. It is associated with achievement and recognition by one's peers, so the relationship between money and job satisfaction and pay satisfaction was explored in an attempt to find a correlation in that job and life satisfaction. The study was unable to find a concrete basis to conclude that teachers from one type of school were more satisfied than teachers from another type of school, based on the two types of schools studied in the research. It was also discovered using "The needsatisfaction in work scale", that white teachers seem to score higher on Independence, recognition and on economic and social security, but black teachers have scored higher on self-expression. Just like many other employees, teachers also desire decent salaries and benefits, suitable working conditions, recognition, and promotion opportunities and contrary to popular belief, the study found that many teachers are happy with their professional roles as teachers.


Abstract : Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has become involved in a variety of operations other than war, ranging from small-scale disaster relief and humanitarian assistance missions to large-scale peace enforcement missions. Such missions have proven inherently ambiguous and often risky, particularly when the threat of civilian casualties and collateral damage has constrained the use of force. Non-lethal technologies, because they are intended to accomplish missions by means other than delivery of direct lethal force, promise to improve our capabilities in this area. Non-lethal technologies potentially have broad application. The operational characteristics associated with individual technologies--range, area of coverage, nature and duration of effect, and delivery systems--vary widely. Since different missions have different requirements, the degree of variation among non-lethal capabilities increases the probability that at least one capability can meet a given mission's requirements. This paper examines the opportunities and limitations which non-lethals offer in the context of operations other than war. It gives special consideration to concepts for crowd control, neutralizing combatants intermingled with non-combatants, and safe area defense.


Summary The circadian clock network is an evolutionarily conserved mechanism that imparts temporal regulation to diverse biological processes. Brain and muscle Arnt-like 1 (Bmal1), an essential transcriptional activator of the clock, is highly expressed in skeletal muscle. However, whether this key clock component impacts myogenesis, a temporally regulated event that requires the sequential activation of myogenic regulatory factors, is not known. Here we report a novel function of Bmal1 in controlling myogenic differentiation through direct transcriptional activation of components of the canonical Wnt signaling cascade, a major inductive signal for embryonic and postnatal muscle growth. Genetic loss of Bmal1 in mice leads to reduced total muscle mass and Bmal1-deficient primary myoblasts exhibit significantly impaired myogenic differentiation accompanied by markedly blunted expression of key myogenic regulatory factors. Conversely, forced expression of Bmal1 enhances differentiation of C2C12 myoblasts. This cell-autonomous effect of Bmal1 is mediated by Wnt signaling as both expression and activity of Wnt components are markedly attenuated by inhibition of Bmal1, and activation of the Wnt pathway partially rescues the myogenic defect in Bmal1-deficient myoblasts. We further reveal direct association of Bmal1 with promoters of canonical Wnt pathway genes, and as a result of this transcriptional regulation, Wnt signaling components exhibit intrinsic circadian oscillation. Collectively, our study demonstrates that the core clock gene, Bmal1, is a positive regulator of myogenesis, which may represent a temporal regulatory mechanism to fine-tune myocyte differentiation.


Bridge crane is one of the most widely used cranes in our country, which is indispensable equipment for material conveying in the modern production. The security of bridge crane is always focused on when being used. The important indicators of crane performances include strength, stiffness, and crane weight, which mainly depend on the structure design of the bridge crane. So it is of importance to research on energy-saving optimization design by means of finite element analysis, ADMAS and Matlab. In this paper, the framework of energy-saving optimization is proposed. Secondly, taking 50 t – 31.5 m bridge crane as research object, its structure is described and the FE model of the bridge cranes is developed for the finite element analysis. Thirdly, shape optimal mathematical model of the crane is proposed for shape optimization as well as size optimal mathematical model for size optimization and topology optimal mathematical model for topology optimization. Besides, further comprehensive energy-saving optimizations are carried out as well as cross-section optimization. Finally, system-level energy-saving optimization design of bridge crane is further carried out with energy-saving transmission design results feedback to energy-saving optimization design of metal structure. The optimization results show that structural optimization design can reduce total mass of crane greatly by using the finite element analysis and optimization technology premised on the design requirements of cranes such as stiffness, strength and so on, thus energy-saving design can be achieved.


This paper proposes a novel visualization and interaction technique for remote surveillance using both 2D and 3D scene data acquired by a mobile robot equipped with an omnidirectional camera and an omnidirectional laser range sensor. In a normal situation, telepresence with an egocentric-view is provided using high resolution omnidirectional live video on a hemispherical screen. As depth information of the remote environment is acquired, additional 3D information can be overlaid onto the 2D video image such as passable area and roughness of the terrain in a manner of video see-through augmented reality. A few functions to interact with the 3D environment through the 2D live video are provided, such as path-drawing and path-preview. Path-drawing function allows to plan a robot's path by simply specifying 3D points on the path on screen. Path- preview function provides a realistic image sequence seen from the planned path using a texture-mapped 3D geometric model in a manner of virtualized reality. In addition, a miniaturized 3D model is overlaid on the screen providing an exocentric view, which is a common technique in virtual reality. In this way, our technique allows an operator to recognize the remote place and navigate the robot intuitively by seamlessly using a variety of mixed reality techniques on a spectrum of Milgram's real-virtual continuum.


Bykanova, O.A., R.G. Akhmadeev, N.Y. Glubokova and I.S. Kravchuk, 2018. The global market of roundwood: fi nancial aspects. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 24 (1): 8-16 The forestry industries cluster plays a key role in ensuring sustainable development and stimulating consumption of renewable resources in various sectors of the world economy. A hypothesis has been put forward and proved for countries that have the largest share of roundwood consumption in relation to its production over the period 2010-2014, according to which a sharp increase in consumption over production is not economically and technologically justifi ed and cannot determine the world trend. The revealed regularities determined the opportunities for the stagnation of the timber industry in the economies of the countries of Lebanon, UAE and Br Virgin Island. In turn, according to the countries of Mauritius, Qatar, Tonga, Uzbekistan, on the contrary, there is a steady increase in consumption of roundwood. In the study of world countries that have the smallest share of consumption in relation to production, a hypothesis has been put forward and proved, according to which the production of roundwood in absolute terms grows at a higher rate than its consumption. In addition, the best indicators of the dynamics of exports of roundwood for the under study period have shown steady growth in the main world countries, except Malaysia. When studying the world experience of state support for the forest sector of the economy, it is necessary to take into account that the main achievements in the forest sectors are provided largely due to the active role of the state, which implies the implementation of the national forest policy. The main priorities should be: consistent decision-making in the fi eld of forest management, taking into account the socio-economic, natural-climatic and ecological features of the territories, as well as the balance of the country's environmental, economic and social interests.


Theories in international relations posit, and empirical evidence has verified, that unwilling states can be compelled by another state or by an international institution to enact domestic policy reform. However, these theories ignore the important follow-on question of whether such externally imposed reforms can be expected to stick. Using intellectual property rights (IPR) reform as a policy case, this dissertation seeks to explain why imposed reform stabilizes in some states but not in others. Here, stable policy means a government demonstrates credible and ongoing commitment to the reform after enacting new law. For example, the state passes additional legal measures to extend the reform, and provides ample support for domestic institutions necessary for the law's implementation. This dissertation presents a comparative study of IPR reform in Brazil and South Korea, covering seven years in the former case and sixteen years in the latter. The Korean government acquiesced to U.S. pressure in 1987 and strengthened its national IPR regime. Brazil undertook IPR reform in 1996, owing in part to its obligation to abide by the directives of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Accord). The argument put forward is that states commit to imposed reforms once they capture or create reform benefits, and that it is the state itself, not interest groups, that is the principal architect of domestic policy reform. Though states often yield to external pressure and enact policy reform, they are conceding formal compliance (via ratification) but may be feigning functional compliance (i.e., on-the-ground enforcement). In short, the decision to commit to, or backtrack on, imposed reform is made after enactment. Relative gains concerns figure prominently in a state's calculation of what to do post-ratification. Given that the welfare effects of IPR reform are zero-sum in the short term and indeterminate in the long term, states will backtrack on IPR reform to avoid absorbing the concomitant welfare losses. If the state is able to turn unwanted reform to national advantage, then the state commits and the policy stabilizes despite the fact that the reform lacks widespread local acceptance. Principally an empirical study, this research adds needed depth to the current literature on IPR reform in emerging economies. Thesis Supervisor: Kenneth A. Oye Title: Associate Professor Political Science


We introduce a method to recover the shape of a smooth dielectric object from polarization images taken with a light source from different directions. We present two constraints on shading and polarization and use both in a single optimization scheme. This integration is motivated by the fact that photometric stereo and polarization-based methods have complementary abilities. The polarization-based method can give strong cues for the surface orientation and refractive index, which are independent of the light direction. However, it has ambiguities in selecting between two ambiguous choices of the surface orientation, in the relationship between refractive index and zenith angle (observing angle), and limited performance for surface points with small zenith angles, where the polarization effect is weak. In contrast, photometric stereo method with multiple light sources can disambiguate the surface orientation and give a strong relationship between the surface normals and light directions. However, it has limited performance for large zenith angles, refractive index estimation, and faces the ambiguity in case the light direction is unknown. Taking their advantages, our proposed method can recover the surface normals for both small and large zenith angles, the light directions, and the refractive indexes of the object. The proposed method is successfully evaluated by simulation and real-world experiments.


s, by presenting author and in alphabetical order ................................................................... 11 List of participants ................................................................................................................................. 40 Abstract book The 11th Novo symposium Measures to meet Nordic challenges for sustainable health care organizations Gothenburg, November 9 10, 2017 Copyright: Editors Dellve, Wikström, Björk, Wolmesjö, Larsson Fällman ISBN 978-91-87876-17-2 Layout: Editors and Maria Björk/Reprocentralen Lorensberg Published by: Gothenburg Universitybook The 11th Novo symposium Measures to meet Nordic challenges for sustainable health care organizations Gothenburg, November 9 10, 2017 Copyright: Editors Dellve, Wikström, Björk, Wolmesjö, Larsson Fällman ISBN 978-91-87876-17-2 Layout: Editors and Maria Björk/Reprocentralen Lorensberg Published by: Gothenburg University


Very Long Baseline Radio Interferometry is one of the most recently developed and potentially most useful geodetic measuring techniques. The high accuracy which it can achieve over great distances makes it ideally suited. for studies of many interesting geodetic and geophysical phenomena. The major asset of the system is that, unlike the majority of other accurate techniques, all measurements are independent of the Earth's gravity field.
This thesis contains details of the basic theory of the VLBI technique and describes a model which has been developed to analyse data from the system. This is followed by a description of the application of the variation of co-ordinates method to the adjustment of VLBI observations and details the conditions and restrictions to be applied to the adjustment process. The basic procedure and equipment required to make the observations is described and details are given of the Nottingham University Long Baseline Interferometry Programs (NULBIP) which have been developed to perform the data analysis.
Data has been obtained and analysed from two independent sets of observations using two different VLBI observing systems. The Canadian system has been used for observations using the three antenna array comprising the Chilbolton Observatory, England, the Algonquin Radio Observatory, Canada, and the Owens Valley Radio Observatory, U. S. A. Observations have also been processed from the Haystack-Goldstone baseline in the U. S. A., observed using the NRAO Mk I VLBI system. The software which has been developed has been tested by comparison with independently derived results on these baselines.
The analysis of all the data has shown the VLBI method to be a highly accurate technique capable of measuring intercontinental distances with sub-metre accuracy. The results have indicated the many potential uses of VLBI in geodetic and geophysical research, the major ones of which have been described. The magnitude of systematic scale and orientation errors inherent in the Navy Navigation Satellite System (otherwise known as the TRANSIT system) have been measured by comparing these VLBI results with satellite-Doppler results derived from observations made near the radio telescopes.


Given the potential importance of solar quiet (Sq) ionospheric current in geomagnetic field modeling, it is vital to obtain accurate parameters characterizing its variations, particularly the spatial and temporal variations. In this paper, we derived the Sq current function based on the spherical harmonic analysis (SHA) technique using a 14‐year (2006–2019) quiet geomagnetic field record over the American sector. The empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis was then applied to deduce temporal and spatial variations of the Sq current. It is observed that the first EOF mode of the Sq current function is dominated by solar activity, while the second and third EOF modes exhibit annual and semiannual variations, respectively. Also, the artificial neural network (ANN) model of Sq current function was constructed to validate the EOF model predictions. While the Sq current intensity predicted by the ANN model is underestimated by 2.83%, the EOF model underpredicted the Sq current intensity by 1.92% relative to the observation. The root mean square error (RMSE) of the EOF model is 0.64 kA. This RMSE is about 79% smaller than that of the ANN model. In addition, both the EOF and ANN models capture the variation of the total Sq current (Jtotal) intensity with respect to solar activity. In principle, the EOF model had an optimal performance at nearly 98% accuracy, with the ANN model exhibiting almost the same degree of accuracy, which appears to be a reference point for ionospheric conditions when looking for space weather applications.


A rich literature has developed focusing on the efficacy of peacekeeping operations (PKOs) in a temporal sense—asking whether the periods following a deployment are more peaceful or not. We know less about the efficacy of PKOs in a spatial sense. Can peacekeeping shape the geographic dispersion of particular episodes of violence? We posit that PKOs can contain conflict by decreasing the tactical advantage of mobility for the rebels, by obstructing the movement of armed actors, and by altering the ability for governments to seek and confront rebel actors. We investigate the observable implications using georeferenced conflict polygons from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program's (UCDP) Georeferenced Event Dataset (GED). Our findings confirm that PKOs tend to decrease movement in the conflict polygons, especially when robust forces are deployed and when rebel groups have strong ethnic ties. Our findings, on the one hand, imply that PKOs reduce the geographic scope of violence. On the other hand, PKOs may allow nonstate actors to gain strength and legitimacy and thus constitute an even greater future threat to the state whether some form of accord is not reached.


Expressions for the angular dependence of the intensity of Raman lines in fluids are obtained. A one-to-one relation between depolarization ratio and the angular dependence is shown. Angular dependence was measured for a large number of lines, showing that the easy-to-measure depolarization ratio of a Raman line suffices to determine its angular dependence.


We prove a theorem in QCD stating that in the limit of strong coupling, $g\to\infty$, the observed spectrum of glueballs in QCD is the same of a pure Yang-Mills theory, being mixing effects due to the next-to-leading order. A full effective theory for QCD is obtained and the width of the $\sigma$ resonance decay is straightforwardly computed. This appears as the lowest glueball state. Vacuum gluon condensate is computed that consistently support studies on the identification of this meson as a glueball.


It is generally agreed that the process of economic regeneration - increasing the number of paid jobs - is the single greatest weakness in area regeneration. It is also clear that those who have been unemployed for a long time face multiple disadvantages in trying to get into the labour market.

This new study fills a gap in our knowledge about the effectiveness of schemes developed to date which actively involve employers in targeting the employment problems of disadvantaged areas.

The authors look at 12 case studies of innovative projects, drawing out general patterns and concerns for good practice. They provide a review of the literature to date and a directory of different approaches to involving employers.


This paper describes the hardware and software architecture of a gateway between an Ethernet-style local area network called Strathnet and an X.25 packet switched network (British Telecom's PSS). The hardware is based on a Motorola 68000 processor using the VME bus, and peripheral boards based on an 8-bit 68120/1 processor for the local network and the X.25 interfaces. The software is layered from the low-level executive, through the three X.25 levels and the transport layer, and through the corresponding layers on the local network side, to the bridging software itself. Both hardware and software are designed so that the system can be a general-purpose gateway: for example, the local area network peripheral board could be replaced by a ring type interface, and the software within the local network layers could similarly be replaced.


Barbara Ann Brennan's bestselling first book, "Hands of Light," established her as one of the world's most gifted healers and teachers. Now, in her long-awaited new work, she continues her ground-breaking exploration of the human energy field, or auro - the source of our experience of health or illness. Drawing on many new developments in her teaching and practice, she shows how we can be empowered as both patients and healers to understand and work with our most fundamental healing power: the light that emerges from the very center of our humanityIn a unique approach that encourages a cooperative effort among healer, patient, and other health-care providers, "Light Emerging" explains what the healer perceives visually, audibly, and kinesthetically and how each of us can participate in every stage of the healing process. Presenting a fascinating range of research, from a new paradigm of healing based on the science of holography to insights into the "hara level" and the "core star," "Light Emerging" is at the leading edge of healing practice in our time. You'll discover: How each of us can tap our innate power to heal ourselves and othersA complete patient's guide to working with a healer: How a healer's technique and goals differ from those of a physician or a therapist and how these professinals can best cooperate to facilitate healingThe seven layers of the healing process: how to meet your needs on each level, plus step-by-step instructions for creating your own healing planStartling new information about energy interactions in relationships and how to break through negative patterns to new, positive contracts with those closest to usThe crucial connectionbetween healing, creativity, and transcendenceAnd much moreComplete with case histories, exercises, and both black-and-white and full-color illustrations, "Light Emerging" offers a new path to healing, wholeness, and expanded consciousness.


Background Metabolic syndrome (MES) consists of central obesity, hypertension, reduced high density lipoprotein (HDL), elevated serum triglycerides and high Fasting blood sugar (FBS). They are susceptible to cardio-vascular disease, and insulin resistance. The goal of present research was to assess any relation between the composition of the body in Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (T1DM) children and having components of metabolic syndrome. Materials and Methods This cross sectional study included all T1DM children who were referred to the pediatric clinic of diabetes, affiliated to the Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Iran during Jul 2013 to Aug 2014. Anthropometric data, blood pressure, fasting blood glucose, lipids and body mass indices like android and gynoid fat mass was done by one physician with standard scale and techniques. The obtained data were analyzed using SPSS-18. Results Overall 87cases with definite diagnosis of T1DM were admitted in this duration (2013-2014).There was a positive correlation appeared between hypertriglyceridemia and Android fat mass (r=0.1 and P =0.046).  Otherwise, there wasn't any relation between body composition criteria and the reduced HDL level, high blood pressure, Abdominal obesity and elevated FBS (P>0.05) . Conclusion It was revealed that hypertriglyceridemia was associated with Android fat mass. However, more pathophysiological research is needed to reveal the association of MES components and body-composition in T1DM children.


Conducting probe atomic force microscopy (CP-AFM) was used to examine electrical transport through an individual grain boundary (GB) in the organic semiconductor sexithiophene (6T, Egap ∼ 2.3 eV). The sample consisted of a pair of grains grown by vapor deposition onto an SiO2/Si substrate. A variable channel length transistor was constructed using a microfabricated Au electrode contacting one grain, a Au-coated AFM tip as a positionable electrode, and the doped Si substrate as a gate. The GB resistance was found to be gate voltage dependent and large, on the order of 109−1010 Ω for a 1 μm boundary length. Resistances across single 6T grains were an order of magnitude lower. The results indicate that GBs can be the principal bottleneck to charge transport in polycrystalline organic semiconductor films, particularly at low gate fields, consistent with a recent model that proposes potential barriers exist between grains. We estimate the GB barrier height to be on the order of 100 meV.


Groundwater is a fundamental component in the water balance of any watershed. It affects considerably on flow regime, especially on base flow. However, it is not easy to survey this component, notably towards the lack of data catchment and developping countries. This study is to present a new approach to overcome the limitation in simulating the ground water. By using the deterministic distributed hydrological model, the study is hope to provide basic information about ground water for a catchment in Vietnam coastal central region, Cu De river catchment. The modelling is realized for an area of 425.2 km2 in period of 2006 – 2010. The results are analyzed in many aspects such as: groundwater spatial distribution, groundwater flow process, groundwater storage, and groundwater recharged volume.


John Snow's investigation of the 1854 cholera outbreak in London is portrayed as a classic example of epidemiology informing real world implementation. The public discourse regarding cholera in Victorian London was more fraught than is generally appreciated today. Snow suspected that cholera was transmitted by contaminated water. At a time when disease was believed to be spread by miasma (foul air), Snow's views were revolutionary. Snow's story will be retold in the person of his friend and colleague Rev Henry Whitehead. 600 of Whitehead's parishioners died in the epidemic. Though initially sceptical of Snow's theories, he investigated the outbreak using his strong network of relationships with the people of Soho, identifying the sentinel case and source of contamination of the Broad Street Well. Snow had died when cholera returned to London in 1865/66, leaving Whitehead the main authority on the Broad Street outbreak. Whitehead worked with the Government Statistician William Farr's staff to identify the source of the outbreak. This time Farr was convinced and took up the cause. Arguably, the real driver for reform may have been political. It was not until the "big stink," when the heavily contaminated Thames became so disgusting that it threatened to close the newly opened House of Commons, that politicians found the motivation to pass legislation ensuring clean water. The ferocious public discussion regarding cholera in Victorian England has many parallels with contemporary public health debates. While Snow's theories have subsequently been proven, he did not win the argument. Others who were more politically savvy and socially better connected did that. "Dr Snow's views on cholera," said a medical friend to me in 1855, "are generally regarded in the profession as very unsound. If that be the case," I replied, "then heresy may be as good a thing in your profession as some of you are apt to suppose it is in mine." Reverend Henry Whitehead (1825–1896).


According to the basic features of the process features of parts, a concept of logical parts and logical tools is analyzed, and a tool selection method based on process features of parts are proposed. A system for management and selection of NC tools is developed successfully, and by this system an exchange among tool parts produced by the different manufacturers, and the intelligent selection of tools based on the process features can be realized. The present analysis can provide the basis for its applications.


Abstract. Ice cores from polar ice sheets and glaciers are an important climate archive. Snow layers, consecutively deposited and buried, contain climatic information from the time of their formation. However, particularly low-accumulation areas are characterised by temporally intermittent precipitation, which can be further redistributed after initial deposition, depending on the local surface features at different spatial scales. Therefore, the accumulation conditions at an ice core site influence the quantity and quality of the recorded climate signal in proxy records. This study aims to characterise the local accumulation patterns and the evolution of the snow height to describe the contribution of the snow (re-)deposition to the overall noise level in climate records from ice cores. To this end, we applied a structure-from-motion photogrammetry approach to generate near-daily elevation models of the surface snow for a 195 m2 area in the vicinity of the deep drilling site of the East Greenland Ice-core Project in northeast Greenland. Based on the snow height information we derive snow height changes on a day-to-day basis throughout our observation period from May to August 2018 and find an average snow height increase of ∼ 11 cm. The spatial and temporal data set also allows an investigation of snow deposition versus depositional modifications. We observe irregular snow deposition and erosion causing uneven snow accumulation patterns, a removal of more than 60 % of the deposited snow, and a negative relationship between the initial snow height and the amount of accumulated snow. Furthermore, the surface roughness decreased by approximately a factor of 2 throughout the spring and summer season at our study site. Finally, our study shows that structure from motion is a relatively simple method to demonstrate the potential influences of depositional processes on proxy signals in snow and ice.


Quantitative trait loci (QTLs) mapping has been performed
during the past decades in an attempt to identify genes, gene products and
mechanisms underlying numerous quantitative traits. It's a strategy based on
natural variations in genes and gene products, which facilitates translation
from animal models to human clinical conditions. Our team has shown that the
inbred rat strains Lewis (LEW) and Spontaneously Hypertensive Rats (SHR) differ
with respect to several emotionality- related behaviors, one of which (inner
locomotion in the open field) was strongly influenced by a QTL (Anxrr16) on rat chromosome 4. Since
then, several other studies not only corroborated the initial description of Anxrr16, but also extrapolated its
effects to a broader context (rats from both sexes and regardless of the
estrous cycle phase) and suggested that this same region influences other
emotionality-related behaviors as well as alcohol intake. Other QTLs affecting
neurobiological traits were also found on rat chromosome 4 and several
candidate genes have been pointed out as possibly influencing those phenotypes.
Altogether, these studies suggest that rat chromosome 4 constitutes an
interesting target for the study of the molecular bases of anxiety and other
traits related to emotional reactivity.


This thesis addresses the ambiguous role of Malmö's latest megaproject in the context of the city's racializing urban development trajectory. The project is a public/private congress center, concert hall and hotel complex called Malmö Live. Malmö Live is problematized as the height of spectacle and challenge as it is expected to be the city's most prominent cultural and social meeting place. The inquiry is directed to how its expectation of relevancy came about and utilizes a Foucauldian inspired genealogical methodology. The result stems from an investigation of the historical, present, local and global conditions that constitutes the expectancy of its relevancy. The investigation notes the divisiveness of tourism and how it affects ways of thinking and doing government on multiple scales, and in particular how it motivates the case in question. The result shows that there are affinities between tourismduring-colonialism and the contemporary tourism industry. Where the former was appropriated by colonialism and overtly racializing, the latter is allowed appropriacy by a currency ascribed to selected geographies and histories. By describing the becoming of this megaproject and the use of tourism knowledge and technology, the how-question about the expectation of Malmö Live's relevancy leads to a genealogical reconstruction of Malmö Live as a wager on whiteness. The wager on whiteness hold no guarantees, but the power of it is the ability to be persuasive and believed, and the currency it holds for those who perform it. The thesis ends with a discussion on what is at stake with Malmö Live, i.e. Malmö's whiteness.


Graphene, a plane object composed of carbon atoms, is a perspective material for nanoelectronics and spintronics because of its unique electron and magnetic properties. It was found that graphene reveals spin polarization effect, i.e. its magnetic features increase when crystal defects (vacancies and clusters of vacancies) are introduced. Systematic analysis is per- formed by ab initio simulation with the use of VASP program complex in order to state spin polarization dependence of graphene on the number vacancies in a cluster and on a cluster con- figuration.


Aircraft dynamic systems digital simulation platform modeling was construct based on engineering needs and provide the basis of experimental data. Combined with dynamic system characteristics and saber software characteristics .In the Saber simulation software, used the schematic-based, based on functional requirements and the modeling method based on experimental data to establish a dynamic system of different parts of the device model, and according to different modeling methods established by the electrical load model and control model of power systems consisting of mixed-signal model. Finally, experimental verification of the whole system model, simulation results compared with the experimental results prove the accuracy of the system model, effective and practical.


Electroencephalography (EEG) is a powerful, inexpensive, and underutilized neurophysiology diagnostic tool. Since EEG signals contain a wealth of information about brain functions, there are many approaches in analyzing EEG signals with spectral techniques. We have used short time Fourier transform (STFT) at 19 channel's of EEG for 10 Autism disorders (6-11 years old) and 9 age matched control subjects. The values were assessed with variance analysis. Results are shown that alpha band (8-12Hz) has 89.5% discriminate between two groups. Coherence measures at between total pairs (171 pairs) of 19 channels in three frequency bands (alpha, beta and gamma) of EEG are shown that there are more abnormalities at connectivity between left hemisphere and right temporal lobe with  other lobs.


OBJECTIVE—To develop and test a patient questionnaire on treatment satisfaction with diabetes regimens. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS—Survey items were developed from community clinic focus groups, pretested in patients with diabetes, and examined in two samples of treated patients. RESULTS—Sixteen items performed well in assessing treatment experiences: ease and convenience, lifestyle burdens, well-being, and medical control. Construct validity was supported by associations (P < 0.05) with treatment complexity, self-rated glucose control, health worries, and A1C. Internal consistency ranged from 0.89 to 0.95. CONCLUSIONS—The Diabetes Medication Satisfaction Tool offers a comprehensive assessment of patient acceptability, with diabetes therapy useful for individualizing therapeutic decision making.


Abstract Scholarship on post-apartheid land reform includes research on land claims made to formal protected areas, such as national parks and state game reserves. Little attention has however, been paid to the question of land restitution claims on private lands, on which a range of nominally 'conservation-friendly' land-uses (including commercial hunting) have taken place. This article traces the emergence of the 'community game farm' as a product of land reform processes affecting freehold land in the midlands of KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa. Two groups of land beneficiaries who were granted title to former privately owned game farms used for leisure hunting are studied in detail. The article shows that a range of state and private actors, as well as traditional authorities, have worked to ensure the continuation of the land under conservation or game farming after transfer. The central argument is that in this process, a generic narrative is imposed which works to conflate or deny the distinct historical identities of the beneficiary groups. The article raises questions about the real efficacy of land restitution in this context, as well as the appropriateness of a community-based conservation narrative when applied in the context of small farms such as those considered here.


Changes of the heart autonomic balance between morning (8–9 h) and afternoon (14–15 h) measurements were studied in 22 healthy subjects. The selection of these two daytime periods was substantiated by the established higher risk of cardiovascular incidents in the morning and the relative balance of the vegetative nervous system in the afternoon hours. The changes were analysed by RR-variability indices from ECG recordings in the resting state and with vegetative nervous system stimulation by the handgrip test and Valsalva manoeuvre. It was shown that there were no significant differences between the morning and afternoon values of the respective indices, between morning and afternoon handgrip tests and between morning and afternoon Valsalva manoeuvres. However, there were significant differences in comparison of the index values between resting state and handgrip test and resting state and Valsalva manoeuvre, both from morning and afternoon measurements. Moreover, the significantly differing indices were clustered in different groupings, when comparing resting state recordings with morning and afternoon stimulation tests. For this reason, the authors introduced an indicator for time-related autonomic balance changes. The indicator evaluates the power of each RR-variability index to respond to changes in the autonomic control, in comparisons between resting state and stimulation data in the morning and afternoon measurements. These evaluations showed low power of the frequency-domain indices to respond to time-related autonomic balance changes in stimulation, with respect to the resting state. The time-domain indices have considerably higher power to react to relative morning and afternoon changes in the two vegetative nervous system components. Based on the estimations of the RR-variability indices obtained by the introduced indicator, a profile was constructed to represent time-related heart autonomic balance changes in healthy subjects. It was established that in spite of the relative stability of the vegetative nervous system in healthy subjects, hypersympatheticotonia and relatively lower parasympathetic tone were present in the risky morning hours.


The two-fluid model (TFM) has become a tool for the design and troubleshooting of industrial fluidized bed reactors. To use TFM for scale up with confidence, the uncertainty in its predictions must be quantified. Here, we study two sources of uncertainty: discretization and time-averaging. First, we show that successive grid refinement may not yield grid-independent transient quantities, including cross-section–averaged quantities. Successive grid refinement would yield grid-independent time-averaged quantities on sufficiently fine grids. Then a Richardson extrapolation can be used to estimate the discretization error, and the grid convergence index gives an estimate of the uncertainty. Richardson extrapolation may not work for industrial-scale simulations that use coarse grids. We present an alternative method for coarse grids and assess its ability to estimate the discretization error. Second, we assess two methods (autocorrelation and binning) and find that the autocorrelation method is more reliable for estimating the uncertainty introduced by time-averaging TFM data. © 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 63: 5343–5360, 2017


Intramedullary nailing of metaphyseal fractures may be associated with deformity as a result of instability after fixation. Our aim was to evaluate the clinical use of Poller screws (blocking screws) as a supplement to stability after fixation with statically locked intramedullary nails of small diameter. We studied, prospectively, 21 tibial fractures, 10 in the proximal third and 11 in the distal third in 20 patients after the insertion of Poller screws over a mean period of 18.5 months (12 to 29). All fractures had united. Healing was evident radiologically at a mean of 5.4+/-2.1 months (3 to 12) with a mean varus-valgus alignment of -1.0 degree (-5 to 3) and mean antecurvatum-recurvatum alignment of 1.6 degrees (-6 to 11). The mean loss of reduction between placement of the initial Poller screw and follow-up was 0.5 degrees in the frontal plane and 0.4 degrees in the sagittal plane. There were no complications related to the Poller screw. The clinical outcome, according to the Karström-Olerud score, was not influenced by previous or concomitant injuries in 18 patients and was judged as excellent in three (17%), good in seven (39%), satisfactory in six (33%), fair in one (6%), and poor in one (6%).


Since the 90s of last century, learning organization as a new organizational mode is highly prized by the management scholars all over the world. It is considered as a new trend and an ideal mode of the global organizational management in the knowledge economy era. In consideration of learning organizations with attributes of complex system, the theory of complex adaptive system provides a possible route on methodology for the study of its organizational change. This paper starts from the view of complex adaptive system theory, analyzes the initiative, adaptability of the learning organization and its interaction with the environment. It assumes that with the constant change of the performance parameters, functions and attributes of the organization, the entire organization mode and the structure will also change. Furthermore by constructing a complex adaptive model of learning organization, this paper elaborates the organizational change process, and extracts the information communication, organizational mood, leadership style and organizational knowledge as the impact indicators. The conclusion of this research has some significance as reference for those who try to improve the level of the adaptability of organizations in the various changing environment.


The Singapore healthcare system can be considered a successful system in relation to its efficiency and provision of world class services to Singaporean residents. One of the major factors that have contributed to the success of the Singapore Healthcare system has been how healthcare cost is managed. This paper seeks to evaluate how Singapore manages its healthcare cost. We compare how health cost is managed in Singapore, with that of the United States and Germany. The study found out that Singapore manages its healthcare cost through multiple protection schemes that are supplemented with private health insurance to cater for individual health cost. Individuals are the major contributors of the healthcare cost in Singapore. There are government subsidies to supplement these contributions. The needy and poor are able to be afforded various healthcare services, but only after allowing those who are capable of paying to do so. However, the major problem facing the Singapore healthcare system is the increase in the number of insurance claims.


We performed simulations with the numerical CUDI-CICC code on a typical short ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) conductor test sample of dual leg configuration, as usually tested in the SULTAN test facility, and made a comparison with the new EFDA-Dipole test facility offering a larger applied DC field region. The new EFDA-Dipole test facility, designed for short sample testing of conductors for ITER, has a homogeneous high field region of 1.2 m, while in the SULTAN facility this region is three times shorter. The inevitable non-uniformity of the current distribution in the cable, introduced by the joints at both ends, has a degrading effect on voltage–current (VI) and voltage–temperature (VT) characteristics, particularly for these short samples. This can easily result in an underestimation or overestimation of the actual conductor performance. A longer applied DC high field region along a conductor suppresses the current non-uniformity by increasing the overall longitudinal cable electric field when reaching the current sharing mode. The numerical interpretation study presented here gives a quantitative analysis for a relevant practical case of a test of a short sample poloidal field coil insert (PFCI) conductor in SULTAN. The simulation includes the results of current distribution analysis from self-field measurements with Hall sensor arrays, current sharing measurements and inter-petal resistance measurements. The outcome of the simulations confirms that the current uniformity improves with a longer high field region but the 'measured' VI transition is barely affected, though the local peak voltages become somewhat suppressed. It appears that the location of the high field region and voltage taps has practically no influence on the VI curve as long as the transverse voltage components are adequately cancelled. In particular, for a thin conduit wall, the voltage taps should be connected to the conduit in the form of an (open) azimuthally soldered wire, averaging the transverse conduit surface potentials initiated in the joints.


Cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (cSCC), a form of non-melanoma skin cancer, is the second most common form of cancer in the United States, with over one million cases diagnosed annually. Tpl2 (MAP3K8) is a serine threonine protein kinase in the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signal transduction cascade. Tpl2 was identified by our laboratory as having a tumor suppressive function in skin carcinogenesis, with Tpl2 knockout mice developing significantly more papillomas and squamous cell carcinomas than matched wildtype (WT) controls. Cellular mesenchymal to epithelial transition factor (c-Met) is a receptor heightened in malignant skin cancers and involved in Tpl2 signaling. When bound to its ligand, hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), c-Met can regulate cell proliferation, survival, angiogenesis and invasion. The aim of this study was to ascertain whether c-Met signaling contributes to the heightened skin tumorigenesis in Tpl2-/- mice. Forty-four WT and Tpl2 -/- mice were subjected to a two-stage chemical carcinogenesis protocol for one year to induce skin tumors. Starting at the time of promotion, half of the WT and Tpl2 -/- mice were placed on normal diet and half received diet plus 30mg/kg Capmatinib, a pharmacological inihibitor of c-Met. This diet continued for the duration of the study. No adverse health effects were found in Capmatinib-treated mice. Similar to what we previously reported, Tpl2 -/- mice developed tumors earlier than WT controls and had statistically higher tumor incidence and overall tumor burden than WT mice. The number of tumor bearing Tpl2 -/- and Tpl2 -/- + Capmatinib fed mice was similar, although Capmatinib fed mice had a 60% reduction in overall tumor burden. Studies are underway to determine if Capmatinib affected the frequency of malignant conversion in Tpl2 -/- mice. In summary, our studies demonstrate that heightened c-Met signaling contributes to the higher tumor formation in Tpl2-/- mice and should be evaluated further as a possible therapeutic target in Tpl2-related skin cancers. Citation Format: Nicole F. Bonan, David Kowalski, Kaitlin Kudlac, Lauren G. Falkenberg, Erik Maradiaga, Kira Flaherty, Jonathan S. Wiest, Katie L. DeCicco-Skinner. Role of c-Met in the development and progression of Tpl2-related skin cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2017; 2017 Apr 1-5; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2017;77(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 2809. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2017-2809


Sweatshops do not have a good reputation, often deservedly so. However, despite popular belief, sweatshops can also play a positive role in conditions of abject poverty, gender equality, and unemployment. Investigated in this research are the consequences of sweatshops on a variety of outcomes (municipal services, employment, education, gang violence, class/gender equality and workers' rights) through the application of a natural experiment methodology to El Salvador. Two of the country's largest cities, which are otherwise very similar, have starkly different incidences of sweatshops (high in Santa Ana, low in San Miguel). Using a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods from several different sources (including reports from the CIA, USAID, UN, Human Rights Watch, and the U.S. Department of State) this research argues that the presence of a large sweatshop industry in Santa Ana improved economic opportunities and quality of life compared to those in San Miguel. Also considered (and rejected) are alternative explanations for the better performance of Santa Ana. In a country reeking with havoc since it's founding, the examination on the progression of its economy specific to Santa Ana and San Miguel is imperative. El Salvador originated as a monoculture export economy yet drastically flipped to a country of industry (largely textile). After years of bloodshed, the apparent difference in two cities comparable in history, culture, ethnicity, and geography in economic opportunity and poverty is a divide that simply cannot be ignored.


The development of a 25 T superconducting magnet is usually envisioned with the use of an innermost coil wound with high-temperature superconductor (HTS) material. At present, Bi2Sr2CaCu2Ox and Bi2Sr2Ca2Cu3Ox (BSCCO) conductors are the only candidate conductors available with sufficient length and current carrying capability. Unlike NbTi and Nb3Sn conductors, the BSCCO crystal structure and thus properties are strongly anisotropic. In conductor form, various degrees of anisotropy occur. It is often assumed that this anisotropy simply implies that radial field components must be minimized. We show that this assumption can be misleading. Using the average grain colony misalignment angle to parameterize the anisotropy, three regimes are distinguished in the relationship between average grain colony misalignment and critical current limiting field components. The implications of these separate regimes on the design process for 25 T superconducting magnet design are discussed.


Discrimination problems in a high-dimensional setting is considered. New results are concerned with the role of the dimensionality in the performance of the discrimination procedure. Assuming that data consist of a block structure two different asymptotic approaches are presented. These approaches are characterized by different types of relations between the dimensionality and the size of the training samples. Asymptotic expressions for the error probabilities are obtained and a consistent approximation of the discriminant function is proposed. Throughout the paper the importance of the dimensionality in the asymptotic analysis is stressed.


During the thermo-mechanical processing of aluminium sheet products in commercial production lines the material experiences a complex history of temperature, time and strain paths, which result in alternating cycles of deformation and recrystallization with the associated changes in microstructure and, especially, crystallographic texture. Thus, computer-based alloy and process development requires integration of models for simulat¬ing the evolution of microstructure, microchemistry and crystallographic texture into process models of the thermo-mechanical production of Al sheet. In the present paper the influence of texture on the anisotropic properties is explored for various industrially processed aluminium alloy sheets for packaging applications. Besides the use of experimentally measured sheet textures as an input for the anisotropy calculations, particular attention is given to the use of modelled textures. Here, results from a comprehensive through-process modelling of the texture evolution during the thermo-mechanical production of aluminium sheet are utilized. Eventually, this will enable us to predict the evolution of texture and the resulting properties along the entire process chain and hence to improve product quality of aluminium sheet products avoiding laborious and expensive plant trials.


Designed to complement Learning to Teach Modern Foreign Languages in the Secondary School, this book focuses specifically on the skills and processes of teaching MFL at A and A/S level in schools and colleges. The book is divided into three sections: the changing nature of A and A/S level courses; bridging the gap between GCSE and A level; and planning, teaching and assessment. With chapters on learner independence, teaching and learning grammar, planning topics and programmes of work, working with literature, and vocational alternatives, the book will be an essential text for all secondary MFL students and teachers.


Building and maintaining high-quality test sets remains a laborious and expensive task. As a result, test sets in the real world are often not properly kept up to date and drift from the production traffic they are supposed to represent. The frequency and severity of this drift raises serious concerns over the value of manually labeled test sets in the QA process. This paper proposes a simple but effective technique that drastically reduces the effort needed to construct and maintain a high-quality test set (reducing labeling effort by 80-100% across a range of practical scenarios). This result encourages a fundamental rethinking of the testing process by both practitioners, who can use these techniques immediately to improve their testing, and researchers who can help address many of the open questions raised by this new approach.


Rare species that show habitat specificity and an aversion to habitat disturbance may be common in the Orchidaceae (Tremblay et al. 1998; Bergman et al. 2006). Nonetheless, most orchids may not be in such a critical state and many are, quite frankly, weedy. We may learn much about rare species by asking what makes other orchids common and resilient or actually dependent on change. Most orchids do occur in ephemeral or frequently dis- turbed habitats (Ackerman 1983; Catling 1996) whether they are pastures, roadsides, citrus groves, coffee and tea farms, or simply as epiphytes whose substrates, by definition, are temporary and run the gamut from durable tree trunks to short-lived twigs (Johansson 1974).


For isolation and identification of the antibiotic resistance profile of Staphylococcal infection derived from buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) milk, a total of 100 milk samples have been collected from different villages in Qena governorate, Egypt, these animals were owned by small scale breeding farmers. S. aureus formed 23%, 58% other Staphylococci and other pathogens contained19% of the total number of samples. The S. aureus isolates have been tested for antibiotic susceptibility against 14 different widely used antibiotics, all S. aureus strains were resistant to Nalidixic acid by 100% and the lower percentage of resistance was to Ampicillin by 4.8%. The Multiple antibiotic resistances have been calculated for all S. aureus strains, the highest value was 1 and the least one was 0.143. The Buffaloe is considered one of the most important dairy animals in Egypt especially in the small scale breeding and the presence of S. aureus and other Staphylococci causing a great risk on the productive level of these animals due to mastitis as well as for the human beings, from here comes the importance of the detection of the antibiotic resistance profile.


Objective: To present a case report of asymptomatic post-traumatic chronic hypotony in which the cause was undetected until phacoemulsification.
Methodology: Case report.
Results: A 55-year-old female's left eye suffered blunt trauma causing hyphema and iritis, which were successfully managed; however, up to a year after, the intraocular pressure (IOP) ranged from 3 to 5 mmHg and the anterior chamber remained very shallow (Van Herick grade 4) with the lens–iris diaphragm pushed anteriorly with difficulty assessing the angles for recession or clefts . Visual acuity was initially 20/20 upon resolution of the hyphema but worsened to 20/40 a year after, presumably due to a developing cataract. Periodic dilated fundus examinations revealed no hypotony maculopathy or choroidal effusions. Prior to phacoemulsification, ultrasound biomicroscopy (UBM) revealed 360 degrees of mild peripheral choroidal effusions. During phacoemulsification, after intraocular lens insertion, direct gonioscopy revealed a supero-nasal cyclodialysis cleft (2 clock hours) and this was repaired intraoperatively with direct cyclopexy through a partial thickness scleral flap. Postoperatively, the vision improved to 20/20 without correction and the IOP normalized to 16 to 18 mmHg.
Conclusion: Chronic hypotony post-trauma may be asymptomatic and the cause may not be clinically evident and may be detected by UBM (choroidal effusion). In our case, the proximate aetiology (cyclodialysis cleft) of the effusion was only observed intraoperatively after phacoemulsification for which cyclopexy was performed which increased the IOP to physiologic levels.


OBJECT
Parkinson disease (PD) is often accompanied by various postural abnormalities such as camptocormia (bent spine) or Pisa syndrome (lateral flexion). The authors studied the effect of subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation (STN DBS) on postural abnormality in patients with PD.

METHODS
The authors retrospectively reviewed the clinical course of 18 patients who suffered from significant postural abnormality and underwent bilateral STN DBS. Patients whose preoperative posture score (Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale III, item 28) was 2 or more in the "medication-on" state were enrolled in this study. Eight patients were considered to have camptocormia, and 10 patients were considered to have so-called Pisa syndrome. Nine patients showed apparent thoracolumbar spinal deformity on radiography. Most patients had significant motor fluctuations from levodopa.

RESULTS
In 13 patients with moderate postural abnormality (score of 2 on item 28), 9 patients improved soon after surgery, but 1 patient relapsed. Two patients improved gradually over a long period after surgery, whereas 2 patients did not improve at all. In 5 patients with severe postural abnormality (score of 3 or 4 on item 28), 2 patients improved slightly in the long-term follow-up period after surgery, but 3 patients did not improve at all.

CONCLUSIONS
Postural abnormality in patients with PD could be ameliorated by STN DBS, and therefore surgery should be considered before irreversible spinal deformity develops.


Managing big data is a thermodynamics problem; decreasing size and increasing performance of electronic devices necessitate the use of liquid cooling to dissipate massive amounts of heat that are generated as a result. In locations such as data centers, CPU cooling is accomplished through the use of air and liquid methods. Currently, the purpose of existing liquid cooling designs is to provide cooling to these high power CPU's. We have tested and validated a modified liquid cooling design system that supplements the current cooling architecture with the ability to harvest energy from the waste-heat rejected from these heat sources. An electrolyte capable of undergoing a reversible redox reaction is pumped through a macro-channel flow thermo-electrochemical cell (fTEC). The heat energy flow is coupled with electrical energy through the thermoelectric effect allowing cooling and power harvesting to occur in parallel. Our current design generated 88 μW of power with a power density of 0.05 W m−2, achieved a heat transfer coefficient of 450 W (m2 K)−1. This technology can be employed in any location where liquid cooling is used, from CPU's in data centers to battery packs in electric vehicles. With a fTEC, heat mapping for the entire data center would be possible. This would improve thermoregulation and in addition the energy harvested will reduce the overhead cost for running a data center.


Abstract Maximal regularity for an integro-differential equation with infinite delay on periodic vector-valued Besov spaces is studied. We use Fourier multipliers techniques to characterize periodic solutions solely in terms of spectral properties on the data. We study a resonance case obtaining a compatibility condition which is necessary and sufficient for the existence of periodic solutions.


In this article, we demonstrate the application of a continuous confinement metric across entire river networks. Confinement is a useful metric for characterizing and discriminating valley setting. At the reach scale, valley bottom confinement is measured and quantified as the ratio of the length of channel confined on either bank by a confining margin divided by the reach length. The valley bottom is occupied by the contemporary floodplain and/or its channel(s); confining margins can be any landform or feature that makes up the valley bottom margin, such as bedrock hillslopes, terraces, fans, or anthropogenic features such as stopbanks or constructed levees. To test the reliability of calculating confinement across entire networks, we applied our geoprocessing scripts across four physiographically distinct watersheds of the Pacific Northwest, USA using freely available national datasets. Comparison of manually digitized and mapped with modeled calculations of confinement revealed that roughly one‐third of reaches were equivalent and about two‐thirds of the sites differ by less than ±15%. A sensitivity analysis found that a 500 m reach segmentation length produced reasonable agreement with manual, categorical, expert‐derived analysis of confinement. Confinement accuracy can be improved (c. 4% to 17% gains) using a more accurately mapped valley bottom and channel position (i.e. with higher‐resolution model inputs). This is particularly important when differentiating rivers in the partly confined valley setting. However, at the watershed scale, patterns derived from mapping confinement are not fundamentally different, making this a reasonably accurate and rapid technique for analysis and measurement of confinement across broad spatial extents. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


In this study, the stability problem of discrete-time switched systems without stable subsystems is considered. Using the k-sample-like method, the authors construct a Lyapunov function whose value at the switching instant is less than the value at the last switching instant when the corresponding dwell time belongs to a special time span. According to whether the dwell time belongs to the time span, switchings are divided into two categories: the switching without divergence time and the switching with divergence time. Based on that, a new less conservative exponential stability theorem is established with the bounded maximum average dwell time. Furthermore, by jointly considering the dynamic characteristics of the subsystems before and after switching instants, they also give the stability result via the dwell time with the floating lower and upper bounds. Finally, some numerical examples are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the theoretical results.


The widespread data demand in emerging wireless cellular technologies necessitates the evolution of traditional networks' deployment to accommodate the ever increasing coverage and capacity requirements. In emerging wireless systems a hierarchical multi-level network that consists of a mixture of outdoor small cells (relays) and indoor small cells (femtocell) deployments underneath the traditional macro-cell architecture can be seen as a key deployment strategy to meet these growing capacity demands. In such networks, Femtocell technology has attracted much attention as a key "player" to address coverage and capacity issues mainly in home and enterprise environments. However, a major challenge that arises in such indoor networks originates from the inter-cell interference between the femtocells (commonly known as co-tier interference), assuming that femtocells share the same spectrum. The main objectives of this thesis are to investigate inter-cell interference in femtocell networks and to propose efficient multi-cell scheduling mechanisms that can mitigate inter-cell interference in dense femtocell environments while maintaining spectral efficiency at acceptable level across the cells. We begin with investigating the impact of co-tier interference in femtocells, highlighting the necessity of interference mitigation mechanisms for arbitrary deployment of femtocells. In this direction, a novel low-complexity graph-coloring based interference coordination mechanism is proposed to be applied on top of intra-cell radio resource management. We additionally propose two locally centralized multi-cell scheduling frameworks that enclose adaptive graph-partitioning and weighted capacity maximization concepts. In particular, we decompose the problem in the latter case based on the Exact Generalized Travelling Salesman Problem as a close match in graph-based solutions. Extensive evaluation is provided by simulations showing a significant improvement over the state-of-the-art multi-cell scheduling benchmarks in terms of outage probability as well as user and cell throughput and thus the proposed algorithms are promising candidates of multi-cell scheduling in next generation small cell networks.


We collected data about telephone triage calls concerning children in Sweden. A sample of 110 paediatric calls were recorded. The transcribed data were analysed regarding word count, reasons for calling, results of calls, ages and gender of children, and gender of parents. The median call length was 4.4 min and the median child's age was 3.5 years. Mothers made 73% of calls, but mothers and fathers called to the same extent about daughters and sons, and regardless of age. The most common reasons for calls were ear problems, rash/wound or fever. In nearly half the calls, the telenurses provided self-care advice. Call length, word count or caller's part of word count did not differ according to gender of parents or children. However, mothers were more likely to receive self-care advice while fathers were more often referred to other health services by the telenurses. Telenurses might need to improve their gender competence, and more male telenurses in the service would potentially be beneficial to callers.


The optimal conditions of production of flocculant by the culture of Flavobacterium sp. were examined, using molasses wastewater to replace glucose as carbon source and energy source in the culture medium. Results showed that the COD concentration in molasses wastewater favorable for the growth of the Flavobacterium sp.was 5000 mg•L-1, and inoculum size of 5%(v/v), 30°C, initial pH 7.0 and shaking speed of 150 r•min-1, under the optimal culture conditions, the highest flocculating activity achieved for Kaolin suspension was 95.0% and 4.0 g biomass /L broth was obtained. The Flavobacterium sp. biomass was effective in flocculating some soluble reactive dyes in aqueous solution, reactive Light-Yellow K-4G with a decolorization efficiency of 98.5, using 20 mL of the flocculant in 500 mL of 100 mg•L-1 dye solution.


Abstract TMEM16F is a surface membrane protein critical for platelet procoagulant activity, which exhibits both phospholipid scramblase and ion channel activities following sustained elevation of cytosolic Ca2+. The extent to which the ionic permeability of TMEM16F is important for platelet scramblase responses remains controversial. To date, only one study has reported the electrophysiological properties of TMEM16F in cells of platelet/megakaryocyte lineage, which observed cation-selectivity within excised patch recordings from murine marrow-derived megakaryocytes. This contrasts with reports using whole-cell recordings that describe this channel as displaying either selectivity for anions or being relatively non-selective amongst the major physiological monovalent ions. We have studied TMEM16F expression and channel activity in primary rat and mouse megakaryocytes and the human erythroleukemic (HEL) cell line that exhibits megakaryocytic surface markers. Immunocytochemical analysis was consistent with surface TMEM16F expression in cells from all three species. Whole-cell recordings in the absence of K+-selective currents revealed an outwardly rectifying conductance activated by a high intracellular Ca2+ concentration in all three species. These currents appeared after 5–6 minutes and were blocked by CaCCinh-A01, properties typical of TMEM16F. Ion substitution experiments showed that the underlying conductance was predominantly Cl–-permeable in rat megakaryocytes and HEL cells, yet non-selective between monovalent anions and cations in mouse megakaryocytes. In conclusion, the present study further highlights the difference in ionic selectivity of TMEM16F in platelet lineage cells of the mouse compared to other mammalian species. This provides additional support for the ionic "leak" hypothesis that the scramblase activity of TMEM16F does not rely upon its ability to conduct ions of a specific type.


Study of Sertoli cells of the ground squirrel provides a unique opportunity to examine cell structure and function. The cells are large, have an elaborate cytoskeleton, and undergo dramatic changes in organization during spermatogenesis. Microtubules (MTs) are prominent elements of the cytoskeleton and appear to be associated structurally with many of the events that occur during sperm production. To investigate the function of MTs, animals were injected subcutaneously with colchicine, and their seminiferous epithelia examined by light and electron microscopy. Some animals were injected with 30--80 mg of the drug per kg body weight and sacrificed 3 to 5 hr later. Others were given 0.3 mg/kg/day for 6 days and processed on day 7. Virtually no MTs were seen in Sertoli cells after short-term treatments, and their numbers were greatly reduced after the long-term injections. Intermediate filaments were very evident throughout the cytoplasm of treated cells, particularly in the short-term studies. Moreover, a close association of some of these filaments with centrioles was observed. In all cases, elongate spermatids which normally move apically did not do so. Indeed, some spermatids appear to have been pulled to a basal position after having moved apically prior to treatment. Also, smooth endoplasmic reticulum (SER) accumulated basally in the Sertoli cell, unlike controls, and the acrosomes of late spermatids developed abnormally or did not complete their shape changes. Cell junctions appeared normal and sperm release was observed. In conclusion, our data suggest that Sertoli cell MTs are necessary for the normal development and translocation of spermatids in the seminiferous epithelium and are involved with positional changes in Sertoli cell SER. They do not appear essential for the maintenance of cell junctions.


The cytotoxic effects of oxygen radicals have been studied in enriched population of mature bovine oligodendrocytes in culture. Oxygen radicals were generated enzymatically by glucose and glucose oxidase, and hypoxanthine and xanthine oxidase combinations. Cytotoxicity was assessed by trypan blue exclusion and percentage lactate dehydrogenase release into the culture media. Incubation of bovine oligodendrocytes with these oxygen radical‐generating systems for 4 hr resulted in significant cell death, especially in the glucose oxidase system. The oligodendrocytes were completely protected by catalase from the cytotoxic effects of both oxygen radical generating systems. However, superoxide dismutase, dimethylsulfoxide and antioxidants such as vitamin E and glutathione did not protect oligodendrocytes from the oxidant‐mediated cytotoxicity. It appears that hydrogen peroxide produced in these oxygen radical‐generating systems gives rise to toxic radicals that induce the cell death of bovine oligodendrocytes in culture.


In this paper, a power-law relation modeling called the vario-fractal model is introduced in order to understand the discrepancies between the linear and non-linear distribution of the elements and its application for mineral exploration in the calamine Zn-Pb ore-deposit. From a hypothetical viewpoint, since geochemical zonation of the supra- and sub-ore elements is a crucial evaluation criterion for concealed/underlying mineralization potentials, this hypothesis can be tested by delineating the fractal surfaces of elements as the geometric evidence of primary geochemical zonation of elements in the calamine mine. A comparison of the linear regression results with the Poisson distribution coefficients indicate the relative tendency of the elements towards a non-linear distribution. Therefore, a logarithmic equation derived from the variance-distance relationship (power-law) is used here for the delineation of fractal surfaces of elements as the geometric features related to proper self-organized distributions. In this research work, the vario-fractal expression of geochemical zonation has trace-element tendencies to the non-linear distribution. The results obtained show that the calamine's fractional surfaces are mostly of self-organized types, situated at 2 < FD < 3 as "real fractal surfaces", although 3 of the elements appear in the quasi-fractal populations called "near Brownies" here. Moreover, the calamine's fractal surfaces can be extended throughout the anomalous regions or may be distributed as limited types of the finalized model, which is a fractal-based pattern of geochemical zonation of the elements for evaluation of the hypogenic mineralization potential and has been prioritized to 6 target-areas containing 10 elements with real fractal surfaces and 3 more at near Brownies and then validated by the mineralogical evidence.


About 300 years ago Sebastien Truchet systematically studied patterns that could be formed from square tiles that were divided by a diagonal into a white triangle and a black triangle. Other pattern creators have been inspired by him to make Truchet-like tilings composed of circular arcs and other motifs. These tilings are all based on Euclidean tessellations, usually the tiling by squares. In this paper we extend the concept of a Truchet tiling to the hyperbolic plane and show some sample patterns.


The study of the phenotype of immunocompetent dendritic cells of the skin in patients with psoriatic arthritis in the course of treatment with deresinated naphthalan (DRN) has revealed some aspects of the mechanism of therapeutic action of DRN. Use of the complex of monoclonal antibodies allowed the authors to determine membrane markers of various cells belonging to the system of mononuclear phagocytes and participating in development of immunoinflammation in the skin. The active stage of the disease is characterized by a fall in the number of CDIa+ cells. HLA-DR+ cells are more resistant. DRN therapy led to prevalence of CDIa+ cells.


The kinetic mechanism of glutamate dehydrogenase with the monocarboxylic substrate norvaline was examined by using initial-rate steady-state kinetics and inhibition kinetics. To a first approximation the reaction mechanism can be described as a rapid-equilibrium random-order one. Binding synergism between the monocarboxylic substrate and coenzyme is not observed. Dissociation constants for NAD+ and 2-oxoglutarate calculated from the kinetic data assuming a rapid-equilibrium random-order model are in good agreement with independently obtained estimates. Lineweaver-Burk plots with varied norvaline concentration are not strictly linear, and it is concluded that a steady-state random-order model more accurately reflects the observed kinetics with norvaline as substrate.


Purpose of review Postprandial suppression of lipolysis in adipose tissue and stimulation of de novo lipogenesis (DNL) in the liver by insulin are essential for the metabolic homeostasis in the mammalian organism. The mechanism of coregulation of lipolysis and DNL is not clear. Recent findings Insulin controls both lipolysis and DNL at the level of transcription via the same mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) and FoxO1-mediated signaling pathways. Summary mTORC1 suppresses lipolysis in adipose tissue and activates DNL in the liver, whereas FoxO1 has the opposite effect. Individual inputs of either mTORC1 or FoxO1 in the regulation of lipid metabolism may be difficult to evaluate because of the cross talk between these pathways.


Sustainability issues in the agro-food sector have become increasingly important, and in order to deal with these sustainability issues, innovations are deemed necessary. Only introducing new technologies is not enough, system innovations are needed in which changes in the whole socio-technical system are required. However, because the Dutch agro-food system is very complex and involves a great diversity of actors, varying from farmers to processing businesses, and from societal organizations to farmers' associations, innovation is not very simple. These actors have different backgrounds, goals, ideas and stakes, which make the interaction between them sometimes difficult. The phenomenon highlighted in this thesis is that different actors have their own way of framing issues related to the challenges of sustainability. Framing is the phenomenon that actors are limited in the way they think and act due to underlying cognitive structures, interactional patterns and/or material characteristics. In particular, umbrella terms such as 'sustainability', involving different meanings, can be expected to be framed in different ways by various actors. In this research we suggest a typology of framing based on three different levels of social dynamics, on which frames reside and operate in distinct ways, namely the level of the global discourse (societal discourses), localized collective (project level) and face-to-face interaction (between individuals). Furthermore we make a distinction between cognitive frames that are relatively static structures in one's mind that enable and constrain understanding, action and interaction; interactional frames that are the fluid frames that condition interaction; and material frames that are the characteristics of artefacts that enable and constrain understanding, action and interaction. In topic biographies we followed framing of topics over time, and we typically see differences in framing, struggles about problems and solutions, and alignment of frames in various forms and degrees. We can make a distinction between internal and external aspects influencing the framing in a project. The cases show that the sense of urgency among the actors can be influential in determining whether a collective solution should be found or not. Alignment may lead to different situations: multiple frames can exist beside each other; frames complement each other and that actors combine ideas in a 'distributed' frame; or actors have the same frame, namely a 'collective' frame. Typically, innovation processes become difficult when they run into limits of existing ideas and developments. This research shows why problems can be difficult to tackle; especially in the case of transitions that entail complex changes and involve many actors, and where solutions are not straightforward. Often, local visions and strategies are coupled to more general ideas and discourses. We demonstrated that a creative solution can reconcile diverse frames and thereby help to realize a system innovation. Heterogeneous actors will have different frames, and should deal with these differences in order to get a project up and running. The practical lesson is, then, that it helps when actors are aware of their own frames and the frames of others and make them explicit.


This works aims at studying, through the Monte-Carlo method, the influence of the leaching kinetics parameters spatial variability on the lilfespan of a concrete structure. The considered structure is a tunnel for nuclear waste disposal. It is observed that the expected value for the lifespan estimated when considering the material spatial variability is significantly lower than the lifespan estimated with a single simulation considering uniform parameters fields, equal to the expected value for each parameter.


The authors examine their 2014 publication "Predicting Intraday Trading Volume and Volume Percentages" and discuss subsequent changes in trading that validated the models outlined in the paper and prompted updates. The original models accommodate the general shift to passive investing and the trend toward ETF investing. Analyzing imbalance information has become more important to institutional traders as relative participation in closing auctions has increased. The authors discuss the evolution of analytical software platforms since the paper and outline expected trends in both volume forecasting and trading analytics. A major application of enhanced volume forecasts relates to the trend of buy-side clients performing scientific experiments to select algorithms and inform parameter selection. Specifically, volume profile error, a metric examined in the paper, provides context to compare broker algorithm performance and real-time volume forecasts can be used in algorithm routing decisions.


This paper presents an overview of the research that has been carriecI out to improve the understanding of the fracture processes occurring in rock under high levels of stress. The onset and growth of fractures are studied by means of laboratory model testing, and the results obtained are used in the calibration and validation of the numerical model DIGS. which is based on displacement discontinuity. The results obtained so far have shown that, while there are overall simJlarities between the experimental results and the numerical simulations, improvements to the experimental procedures and the DIGS are required for a detailed mechanistic understanding of shear-band orientations and extension fractures


Ground-based simultaneous observations of sun direct and scattering radiation were carried out in Dunhuang for nearly 2 years. Aerosol optical depth, Angstrom wavelength exponent and size distribution were obtained from solar extinction and sky radiation. Water vapor content was obtained from sun direct radiation measurement at 940 nm. Relationship between aerosol properties and water vapor was discussed. Results showed that distinct seasonality of aerosol optical depth and Angstrom wavelength exponent was corresponding to seasonal variation of dust activity. Aerosol relative size distribution kept stable and volume concentration change was the reason resulting in variation of aerosol optical depth. Water vapor had minor effects on aerosol optical and physical properties.


A large proportion of rare disease patients remain undiagnosed and the vast majority of such conditions remain untreatable whether diagnosed or not. RNA splicing analysis is able to increase the diagnostic rate in rare disease by identifying cryptic splicing mutations and can help in interpreting the pathogenicity of genomic variants. Whilst targeted RT-PCR analysis remains a highly sensitive tool for assessing the splicing effects of known variants, RNA-seq can provide a more comprehensive transcriptome-wide analysis of splicing. Appropriate care should be taken in RNA-seq experimental design since sample quality, processing, choice of library preparation and sequencing parameters all introduce variability. Many bioinformatic tools exist to aid both in the prediction of splicing effects from DNA sequence and in the handling of RNA-seq data for splicing analysis. Once identified, splicing abnormalities may be amenable to correction using antisense oligonucleotide compounds by masking cryptic splice sites or blocking key splice regulatory elements, or by use of alternative corrective technologies such as trans-splicing. A growing number of such drugs have started to enter clinical use, most notably nusinersen for the treatment of spinal muscular atrophy. By bringing together the fields of RNA diagnostics and antisense therapeutics, it is becoming feasible to envisage the development of a truly personalised medicine pipeline. This has already been shown to be possible in the case of milasen, an n=1 bespoke antisense drug, and the growth and convergence of these technologies means that similar therapeutic opportunities should arise in the near future.


Multi-modal transformer solutions have be-come the mainstay of visual grounding, where the task is to select a specific object in an image based on a query. In this work, we explore and quantify the importance of CNN derived visual features in these transformers, and test whether these features can be replaced by a semantically driven approach using a scene graph. We propose a new approach for visual grounding based on BERT (Devlin et al., 2019), named metaBERT, that enables reasoning over scene graphs. In order to quantify the importance of visual features, we inject both the scene graph information and the visual features to metaBERT. We find that the additional performance due to the visual features vary among datasets, but is mainly limited to a 10-15% accuracy improvement. Through detailed experiments, we explore the effect of the scene graph quality on the performance, and observe that utilizing scene graphs is notably beneficial for selecting non-human objects.


. In order to solve a problem in parallel we need to undertake the fundamental step of splitting the computational tasks into parts, i.e. decomposing the problem solving. A whatever decomposition does not necessarily lead to a parallel algorithm with the highest performance. This topic is even more important when complex parallel algorithms must be developed for hybrid or heterogeneous architectures. We present an innovative approach which starts from a problem decomposition into parts (sub-problems). These parts will be regarded as elements of an algebraic structure and will be related to each other according to a suit-ably defined dependency relationship. The main outcome of such framework is to define a set of block matrices (dependency, decomposition, memory accesses and execution) which simply highlight fundamental characteristics of the correspond-818 ing algorithm, such as inherent parallelism and sources of overheads. We provide a mathematical formulation of this approach, and we perform a feasibility analysis for the performance of a parallel algorithm in terms of its time complexity and scal-ability. We compare our results with standard expressions of speed up, efficiency, overhead, and so on. Finally, we show how the multilevel structure of this framework eases the choice of the abstraction level (both for the problem decomposition and for the algorithm description) in order to determine the granularity of the tasks within the performance analysis. This feature is helpful to better understand the mapping of parallel algorithms on novel hybrid and heterogeneous architectures.


Hybridisation is common among plants and is considered to be an important process in evolution. However, there is much debate as to the role of hybridisation in conservation, particularly whether species of hybrid origin should be protected. In general, conservation policy allows for the protection of hybrids and hybrid progeny if they are shown to be taxonomically distinct, stable and capable of self-perpetuation, and naturally produced. The rare species Adenanthos cunninghamii was suspected to be a hybrid between putative parents, Adenanthos sericeus and Adenanthos cuneatus, as it only occurs where these species co-occur and it displays intermediate and variable morphology. Genetic analysis of A. cunninghamii and the two putative parent species was consistent with this species being a hybrid between A. sericeus and A. cuneatus. Direct analysis of diagnostic loci and phenetic analysis indicated that A. cunninghamii was not genetically uniform and was genetically intermediate between the putative parents. A. cunninghamii is not a distinguishable taxon, morphologically or genetically, and does not produce offspring with morphology within the taxonomic description of the species, thus the species does not satisfy the criteria for protection of hybrids and listing as a rare species in Western Australia.


During the last forty years Universities - historically highly susceptible to external pressures - have been pushed to focus on those activities that could be easily characterized as «useful» in the short-term. Consequently, research has been encouraged - mostly via targeted funding - to focus in directions holding the promise of immediate returns while teaching has been viewed more and more exclusively as preparation for work, neglecting both personal development and civic education. After a few decades in this direction it is becoming clear what had been abundantly clear at the time of the rise of the modern University, between the end of the 19th century and mid 20th century, i.e., focusing too much on «useful» research and teaching produces much less useful results than a more liberal attitude towards knowledge creation and education. This trend has affected, although in different forms, all developed countries. In Italy, however, the push towards «usefulness» has played out in a country with two structural problems: a severe educational gap that places Italy among the least educated oecd countries at the tertiary level and, since 2008 and counter intuitively, a policy that has defunded and shrunk the Italian university system by approximately 20%. In Italy, therefore, besides promoting an approach to research and education based on a more sophisticated definition of «usefulness», it is urgent to invest in the future of a higher education system on the brink of collapse.