Creativity is the innate human resource that economies have yet to harness its full potential in order to contribute towards global prosperity, cultural exchange and social justice. Creativity is the inspirational energy and knowledge that spur many individuals, including young men and women, to new industrial ventures with a vision for future transformations of societies. While no nation inhabited by the people can be short of creativity, innovation tends to emerge where the value of creativity is favorably received by the society and accompanies by freedom to set one's agenda, where creative talents are better organized through business and supported by the institutions, where competition encourages but most importantly rewards creativity and entrepreneurship. The institutionalization of creativity explains why certain society is able to productively organize creativity to solve society's most pressing problem and achieving progress, when others have lagged behind in spite of abundant creativity and a rich civilization. Within this context, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), over the years, has put forward the following question: Can a development model that does not see where and how a culture has existed for hundreds or thousands of years be applied sustainably to any industrial sector? In what ways have current development model overlooked the role of culture and civilization which have long preceded dominant development paradigm of our times? What are the best ways to combine culture and civilization with creativity and innovation? How to transform the creativity of global youth into culture based innovation and translates such synergy into development outcomes and entrepreneurship? UNIDO's Creative Industries (CI) technical assistance program recognizes the integral role of culture in industrial development and the importance of combining culture with innovation and opportunity driven entrepreneurship. In response to an increasing number of requests from countries ranging from Bhutan, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Peru and the Caribbean Island States, UNIDO has been intensifying its assistance to promote the development of cultural assets through CIs, under prevailing conditions of global competition and concerns for harnessing environment - friendly resources. CI is considered a key sector to facilitate operationalization of new perspectives and technologies, through sustainable national development strategies. This is being demonstrated in a number of EU countries, the UK, USA and in emerging economies, i.e. Brazil, India and China. The Organization has identified, together with several countries requesting assistance, traditional cultural products and services which require creativity and innovation and which cannot be outsourced, to enhance capacities to be used by local or international markets. The skills referred to are those which cannot compromise traditional cultural heritage of a province, region, country or geographical identity. The CI concept applied includes several sub-sectors that have potential for wealth and job creation, when accompanied by appropriate policies and strategies. Those CI include industries related to advertising, arts, architecture, crafts, design, film and audiovisual media, the agri-businesses sector for textiles, fashion design, leather, furniture, (slow) food and even community based tourism related services.


The large BglII fragment (2.8 kilobases) of hepatitis B virus DNA including the transcription unit for the hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) was inserted into a bovine papillomavirus vector containing the neomycin resistance gene. The recombinant DNA was transfected into mouse C127 cells. A stable transformed cell line (MS128) secreting a large amount of 22 nm HBsAg particles containing pre-S2 protein was established. The secreted HBsAg particles had the receptor for polymerized human serum albumin. Immunoprecipitation and Western blot analyses showed that HBsAg particles consisted of two major proteins of 22K and 26K encoded by the S gene and a minor protein of 35K encoded by the pre-S2 and S genes. Southern blot analysis revealed that the transfected plasmid was integrated into the host chromosomal DNA and that most of the plasmid sequences were present. These results suggest that the stable expression of the HBsAg in MS128 cells is related to the integrated state of the recombinant DNA.


A PWR incorporates a passive auxiliary feedwater system (PAFS), a closed natural circulation loop which is aligned to feed condensed water to its corresponding steam generator (SG). During its operation, saturated steam in the SG secondary side moves up due to buoyancy force and passes through a steam line, and then flows into a tube-tank type passive condensation heat exchanger where steam is condensed inside the tubes while the tube outer surfaces are cooled by the pool water. The condensate water is passively fed into the SG economizer by gravity. Because a natural circulation loop is susceptible to two-phase flow instability, it is requisite to confirm the system is designed adequately to avoid the potential challenges to its operational safety due to the instability.This paper presents an analytical approach for assessing if the PAFS has possible thermal and fluid mechanical characteristics which could lead to an undesirable unstable or oscillating condensate water level in the vertical pipe section. Both steady and unsteady analytical solutions for a simplified natural circulation loop model of the PAFS were derived in terms of the condensate water level and velocity in the vertical pipe section. From the solutions, the criteria for determining a potential for two-phase instability in the system were obtained.Copyright © 2013 by ASME


PURPOSE
To develop a public-private partnership to study the feasibility of a new approach in collecting and analyzing clinically annotated imaging data from landmark phase III trials in advanced solid tumors.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
The collection of clinical trials fulfilled the following inclusion criteria: completed randomized trials of > 300 patients, highly measurable solid tumors (non-small-cell lung cancer, colorectal cancer, renal cell cancer, and melanoma), and required sponsor and institutional review board sign-offs. The new approach in analyzing computed tomography scans was to transfer to an academic image analysis laboratory, draw contours semi-automatically by using in-house-developed algorithms integrated into the open source imaging platform Weasis, and perform serial volumetric measurement.

RESULTS
The median duration of contracting with five sponsors was 12 months. Ten trials in 7,085 patients that covered 12 treatment regimens across 20 trial arms were collected. To date, four trials in 3,954 patients were analyzed. Source imaging data were transferred to the academic core from 97% of trial patients (n = 3,837). Tumor imaging measurements were extracted from 82% of transferred computed tomography scans (n = 3,162). Causes of extraction failure were nonmeasurable disease (n = 392), single imaging time point (n = 224), and secondary captured images (n = 59). Overall, clinically annotated imaging data were extracted in 79% of patients (n = 3,055), and the primary trial end point analysis in each trial remained representative of each original trial end point.

CONCLUSION
The sharing and analysis of source imaging data from large randomized trials is feasible and offer a rich and reusable, but largely untapped, resource for future research on novel trial-level response and progression imaging metrics.


Lens connexins are phosphorylated in vivo; however, the function and regulation of the phosphorylation remain largely unknown. We have previously identified an in vivo phosphorylation site, Ser364, at the COOH terminus of lens connexin (Cx) Cx45.6 and phosphorylation appears to regulate connexin protein turnover. To assess the specific mechanism of Ser364 phosphorylation in Cx45.6, exogenous wild type and Ser364 mutant Cx45.6 were expressed in primary lens cultures through retroviral infection. Cx45.6 turnover was attenuated primarily by proteasomal inhibitors and to a lesser extent by lysosomal inhibitors. Furthermore, the level of Cx45.6 protein in ubiquitin co-expressed cells was significantly reduced as compared to the cells expressing Cx45.6 alone. Moreover, overexpression of ubiquitin led to a more significant decrease in wild type Cx45.6 than Cx45.6(S364A), a mutant deficient of phosphorylation site at Ser364, although we did not detect any difference in the levels of ubiquitination between wild type and mutant Cx45.6. Interestingly, the mutant mimicking constitutive phosphorylation, Cx45.6(S364D), partially prevented the cleavage of Cx45.6 by caspase-3. Together, our data suggest that phosphorylation of Cx45.6 at Ser364 appears to stimulate Cx45.6 turnover primarily through proteasome pathway and this phosphorylation inhibits the cleavage of Cx45.6 by caspase-3. These findings provide further insights into regulatory mechanism of the specific phosphorylation of connexins in the lens.


This Article was written for a symposium held by the Willamette College of Law entitled Presidential Power in the 21st Century. The Article is intended as a companion piece to The Accountable Executive, which will be published roughly contemporaneously in a symposium issue of the Minnesota Law Review. This Article begins by summarizing the major argument of The Accountable Executive: that a unitary executive is as likely (if not more likely) to diminish government accountability as to increase it. This is due in large part to the enhanced ability, under conditions of unity, of the President or his proxies to secretly influence decision-making and to manipulate data. Accountability and Administrative Structure expands on this argument in three respects. First, it situates the concern over unity's impact on information control and accountability within a broader discussion of accountability and administrative structure. Second, it supplements the functional constitutional analysis of The Accountable Executive with formal constitutional analysis and explains the link between the formalist and functionalist points. Specifically, the Article explains that unity proponents' core formalist point - that the Constitution's founders clearly understood the vesting of executive power in the President to entail exclusive power to implement legislative directives and to control others who engage in such tasks - not only is wrong, but is wrong partly because the founders were wary of the accountability risks posed by centralized presidential control. Third, this Article focuses on two recent examples to demonstrate how unity can undermine accountability.


Longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) seedlings grown from seeds collected from two seed orchards in 2014 showed evidence of hybridization with loblolly pine—as much as 80 percent had some stem elongation in the container nursery. This stem elongation, however, was not to the extent that has typically characterized bareroot seedlings of Sonderegger pine (P. x sondereggeri), the recognized hybrid of longleaf and loblolly (P. taeda) pine. Seedlings from these collections were quantified and outplanted. These outplanted seedlings were tracked to determine if they were Sonderegger pine and analyzed by DNA techniques to confirm their taxonomic status. The results indicate that hybridization has not occurred. Seedling development following outplanting and DNA analyses indicate these seedlings are not markedly different from those of typical longleaf pine. The reason for the unusual stem elongation in the nursery has not been determined.


This historical study aims to clarify a Mamluk Waqf (a bequest of land ownership) titled 'Manjak Basha Waqfia' and found in the village of Beit Safafa near Jerusalem. It is dated to 784H/1382AD. The Waqf consists of four separate documents, the last being the Istadar of Amir Manjak al-Yousufi and Mrs. Tanshaq al-Muthafaria. It describes the efforts of a Mamluk woman to establish economic independence in a system in which control by her father, brother and husband was the norm. Mrs. al-Muthafaria sold, bought and thus obtained land, and deeded it as a Waqf (a mortmain). In doing this, she was represented by two men who were not related to her family, but whom she considered equal (in terms of legal authority) to her husband. The bequest (al- Waqf) defined benefits to her offspring (Thuri), to emancipated persons, to employees of her estates, and to the poor and destitute in Jerusalem, Mecca and Medina. The keeper of the Waqf (Nazer) was obligated to safeguard the Waqf statement, not to rent properties in two consecutive years at the same rate, not to sell that property to dishonest or authoritarian men, and not to write a new contract until the current one had expired. These events took place during the political collapse of the Mamluk state, when corruption of amirs was widespread.


Background—Five years ago, we described a specific ECG pattern of right bundle-branch block and ST-segment elevation in leads V1 through V3 associated with sudden death in patients without demonstrable structural heart disease. Information on long-term outcome has become available due to pooled data on a large cohort of patients with this syndrome who are followed at 33 centers worldwide. Methods and Results—Data on 63 patients (57 men; mean age, 38617 years) with the described ECG pattern were analyzed in terms of arrhythmic events and sudden death. Events were analyzed for patients with at least one episode of aborted sudden death or syncope of unknown origin before recognition of the syndrome (symptomatic patients, n541) and for patients in whom the ECG pattern was recognized by chance or because of screening related to sudden death of a relative (asymptomatic patients, n522). During a mean follow-up of 34632 months, an arrhythmic event occurred in 14 symptomatic patients (34%) and 6 asymptomatic patients (27%). An automatic defibrillator was implanted in 35 patients, 15 received pharmacological therapy with b-blockers and/or amiodarone, and 13 did not receive treatment The incidence of arrhythmic events was similar in all therapy groups (log-rank 0.86); however, total mortality was 0% in the implantable defibrillator group, 26% in the pharmacological group, and 31% in the no therapy group (log-rank 0.0005). All mortality was due to sudden death. Conclusions—Patients without demonstrable structural heart disease and an ECG pattern of right bundle-branch block and ST-segment elevation in leads V1 through V3 are at risk for sudden death. Amiodarone and/or b-blockers do not protect them against sudden death, and an implantable defibrillator seems to be the present treatment of choice. (Circulation. 1998;97:457-460.)


This study is designed to fill any explanatory gaps that have been traditionally underexplored when considering the interplay of implicit/automatic/unconscious and explicit/deliberate/conscious attitudes in the context of celebrity endorsement. The main experiment employed single target-implicit association test as a measure of implicit attitudes. The key finding of the study is that the experimental condition where the fit between the celebrity and the endorsed product was low induced favorable implicit and explicit attitudes, similar to the condition where the fit was high. The explanation for this finding was that dissonance enhanced the association strength of the attitude object through biased attention and elaboration, which provided a basis for favorable propositions. In propositional reasoning, retroactive confirmation of the favorable implicit attitudes resolved dissonance. This study seeks to go beyond the existing endorsement and sponsorship literature developed based on matching principles such as source models, match-up hypothesis, the congruity theory, and associative network models. The authors recommend that managers search for more creative and novel partners in addition to image-matching ones.


Cr/Sc multilayers have been grown on Si substrates using DC magnetron sputtering. The multilayers are intended as condenser mirrors in a soft x-ray microscope operating at the wavelength 3.374 nm. They were designed for normal reflection of the first and second order with multilayer periods of 1.692 nm and 3.381 nm, and layer thickness ratios of 0.471 and 0.237, respectively. At-wavelength soft x-ray reflectivity measurements were carried out using a reflectometer with a compact soft x-ray laser-plasma source. The multilayers were irradiated during growth with Ar ions, varying both in energy (9-113 eV) and flux, in order to stimulate the ad-atom mobility and improve the interface flatness. It was found that to obtain a maximum soft x-ray reflectivity with a low flux (Cr=0.76, Sc=2.5) of Ar ions a rather high energy of 53 eV was required. Such energy also caused intermixing of the layers. By the use of a solenoid surrounding the substrate, the arriving ion-to-metal flux ratio could be increased 10 times and the ion energy could be decreased. A high flux (Cr=7.1, Sc=23.1) of low energy (9 eV) Ar ions founded the most favorable growth condition in order to limit the intermixing with a subsistent surface flatness.


Behavioural disturbances are common in Alzheimer's disease and may be affected by medications being developed to enhance cognition or slow disease progression as well as by psychotropic agents developed specifically to affect behaviour. In many cases, Alzheimer's disease patients included in clinical trials are not selected for behavioural attributes and the patient population is heterogeneous at baseline with regard to these symptoms. Analyses of the behavioural data should include assessment of the effects of the agent on patients who were symptomatic at baseline as well as on the incidence of new behaviours in those without symptoms at the time of study initiation. Analyses may focus on symptomatic patients exhibiting specific degrees of improvement (e.g. 50% reduction in symptom severity). The analytic strategy chosen to characterize the behavioural changes occurring in clinical trials involving Alzheimer's disease patients will depend on the hypotheses being explored, the characteristics of the patients at baseline, the size of the population studied, the assessment methodology, and the outcomes of interest.


The knowledge of spatial and temporal variability of land cover is important to manage water resources for yield forecasting, water stress prediction, irrigation water management and flood protection. Cloud cover dramatically reduces the temporal resolution of optical data thus limiting their operational use; in addition, the spatial resolution is often inadequate for applications in heterogeneous areas. On the other hand, algorithms based on Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) implemented to retrieve vegetation parameters are not yet fully validated. New SAR missions (COSMO-Skymed and Terrasar-X) may represent a suitable source of data for operational uses due to the high spatial and temporal resolution, although X band is not optimal for agricultural and hydrological applications. This paper reports the influence of soil-vegetation variables (especially biomass indices) on X-band COSMO-Skymed data using Ping Pong products. The study is carried out over two different sites: the SELE plain (in the south-eastern part of Campania, Italy) that is mainly characterized by herbaceous plants and tree crops; and the Campobello-Castelvetrano area (in the south-western part of Sicily, Italy) mainly covered by olive trees, vineyards and woods. The sensitivity analysis is performed by comparing vegetation indices (NDVI or LAI) derived by Landsat TM 5 and ETM+ 7 with COSMO-Skymed (CSK) images acquired in May-June 2010 within the project COSMOLAND (Use of COSMO-SkyMed SAR data for LAND cover classification and surface parameters retrieval over agricultural sites) funded by the Italian Space Agency (ASI). Sensitivity analysis results address to develop algorithms to retrieve vegetation biomass maps from CSK X band characterized by high temporal and spatial resolution.


Software Defined Networking (SDN) are based on the separation of control and data planes. The SDN controller, although logically centralized, should be effectively distributed for high availability. Since the specification of OpenFlow 1.2, there are new features that allow the switches to communicate with multiple controllers that can play different roles -- master, slave, and equal. However, these roles alone are not sufficient to guarantee a resilient control plane and the actual implementation remains an open challenge for SDN designers. In this paper, we explore the OpenFlow roles for the design of resilient SDN architectures relying on multi-controllers. As a proof of concept, a strategy of active replication was implemented in the Ryu controller, using the OpenReplica service to ensure consistent state among the distributed controllers. The prototype was tested with commodity RouterBoards/MikroTik switches and evaluated for latency in failure recovery and switch migration for different workloads. We observe a set of trade-offs in real experiments with varyin workloads at both the data and control plane.


There is increasing social and political focus on a global solution to reduce CO2 vehicle emissions and to conserve diminishing raw material resources. This is leading to ever stricter environmental regulations and consequently new challenges for steel users in Europe. These challenges must be supported by the steel producers, who can also look to find new opportunities through innovative solutions to increase the competitiveness of steel against other materials such as aluminum. This paper presents answers for many of the challenges being faced by the steel industry. These are demonstrated with reference to the continual development of the galvanizing process, the coating of ultra high strength steels, new coatings for hot forming products and highly corrosion resistant zinc magnesium based alloy coatings.


In this paper, we focus on the construction of structure preserving algorithms for Birkhoffian systems, based on existing symplectic schemes for the Hamiltonian equations. The key of the method is to seek an invertible transformation which drives the Birkhoffian equations reduce to the Hamiltonian equations. When there exists such a transformation,applying the corresponding inverse map to symplectic discretization of the Hamiltonian equations, then resulting difference schemes are verified to be Birkhoffian symplectic for the original Birkhoffian equations. To illustrate the operation process of the method, we construct several desirable algorithms for the linear damped oscillator and the single pendulum with linear dissipation respectively. All of them exhibit excellent numerical behavior, especially in preserving conserved quantities.


Polygonal fault systems (PFSs) are an enigmatic class of small nontectonic extensional faults. PFSs are predominantly hosted in fine-grained sedimentary tiers and are prevalent along many continental margin basins. The genesis of PFSs is widely debated, and little is known about the time frame for polygonal fault growth. We present the first measurements of throw rates for polygonal faults by measuring the vertical offset of seven age-calibrated horizons mapped using three-dimensional seismic reflection data from the Norwegian Sea. Individual polygonal faults exhibit a range of throw rate profiles through time, ranging from near linear to singly or multiply stepped. The stepped profiles have short-term throw rates ranging from 0 to 18 m/m.y. Time-averaged throw rates of 180 polygonal faults over the entire 2.61–0 Ma interval are normally distributed and range between 1.4 and 10.9 m/m.y. We convert our PFS throw rates to displacement rates and compare these to published displacement rates for gravity-driven and tectonic normal faults. We find that the displacement rates of polygonal faults mark the lower limit of a continuous spectrum of extensional fault displacement rates; they are as much as two orders of magnitude slower than those of gravity-driven faults, and as much as three orders of magnitude slower than those of the fastest-growing tectonic faults. We attribute the ultra-slow kinematic behavior to the nontectonic nature of polygonal faults, where throw accumulates primarily through dewatering of the largely fine-grained sediments composing the host layers for the PFSs, and through differential volumetric strain between the fault footwalls and hanging walls.


Dairy products contain lipids rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids and their esters are easily oxidized by molecular oxygen over time. Deleterious changes in dairy products caused by lipid oxidation include not only loss of flavour or development of off-flavours, but also loss of colour, nutrient value, and the accumulation of compounds, which may be detrimental to the health of consumers. One of the most effective ways of retarding lipid oxidation in dairy products is to incorporate antioxidants. Sometimes synthetic phenolic antioxidant, butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA) and butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) are used to delay this oxidation. Supplementation dairy products with natural antioxidants (polyphenolic compounds) are better using than synthetic antioxidant and could be potentially. The use of rosemary as natural antioxidant in dairy products can reduce the rate of lipid oxidation and hydrolysis besides may be beneficial in increasing the shelf life of these products. This supplementation will move these products into the functional food area under new category as healthy dairy products. This literature review covers the research that has focused on rosemary as antioxidant and anti-inflammatory agent that can inhibit the lipid oxidation and have health benefits by preventing carcinogens from binding to DNA, fight and stop pain. In this review, we survey the previous studies that were conducted on the application of rosemary extract as an antioxidant to extend the shelf life and to minimize nutritional losses of dairy product.


Space solar power generation systems have a significant impact on Electric Propulsion (EP) technology development.1,2,3 Recent advances in solar cell, deployment, and concentrator hardware have led to significant reductions in component mass, thereby decreasing power generation system specific mass. Combined with maneuvering requirements for Air Force and DoD missions of interest, propulsive requirements emerge that provide direction for technology investments. Projections for near- to mid-term propulsion capabilities are presented indicating the need for thrusters capable of processing larger amounts of power (100 – 200 kW), operating at relatively moderate specific impulse (2000 – 6000 seconds) and high efficiency (≫ 60%), and having low propulsion system mass (≪ 1 kg/kW). Two technology areas are identified and discussed in the context of the above thruster constraints. Concentric channel Hall thrusters are an extension of a mature technology, offering operation over expanded power levels and lower propulsion system specific mass at state-of-the-art (SOTA) efficiencies. Field Reverse Configuration (FRC) thrusters are a specific type of pulsed inductive accelerator that have the potential to operate up to MW power levels, at propulsion system specific masses even lower than concentric channel Hall thrusters, and on a wider range of propellants. However, FRCs are currently less mature than the Hall thruster variants. Comparisons of candidate technologies are evaluated with VASIMR, a well publicized high power EP device currently under development.


This study is concerned with the investigation of the suitability of several empirical and semi-empirical drying models available in the literature to define drying behavior of viscose yarn bobbins. For this purpose, firstly, experimental drying behaviour of viscose bobbins was determined on an experimental dryer setup which was designed and manufactured based on hot-air bobbin dryers used in textile industry. Afterwards, drying models considered were fitted to the experimentally obtained moisture ratios. Drying parameters were drying temperature and bobbin diameter. The fit was performed by selecting the values for constants in the models in such a way that these values make the sum of the squared differences between the experimental and the model results for moisture ratio minimum. Suitability of fitting was specified as comparing the correlation coefficient, standard error and mean square deviation. The results show that the most appropriate model in describing the drying curves of viscose bobbins is the Page model. Keywords—Drying, moisture ratio, Page model, viscose


Background Patients with differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) after total or near-total thyroidectomy require 131l therapy. After surgery the persistence of lymph node metastases in our series of patients was frequent (30%). Such patients are preferentially treated with radioiodine and shifted to surgical re-intervention when the nodal lesions persist after two 131I treatments. Aim Use of an intraoperative radioactive probe (C-TraK) to allow a more radical surgical approach in thyroid cancer patients submitted to surgery for lymph node metastases. Methods and results After adequate withdrawal of L-thyroxine suppressive therapy six patients were given high 131l doses followed by post-therapy WBS which demonstrated cervical activity in 5 patients and peri-jugular activity in 1. Surgery with the help of a gamma probe allowed to detect and remove all metastatic nodes. After excision all surgical specimens showed higher radioactive counts with respect to the background. The post-surgical scan showed the disappearance of all areas of 131I uptake. Histology confirmed the presence of metastatic lesions from papillary thyroid cancer. Conclusions We conclude that the use of a gamma probe can be successful in patients with metastatic neck lesions resistant to 131I treatment, particularly in patients with nonpalpable lesions.


Numerous observations demonstrate that considerable spatial variability exists in components of the marine planktonic ecosystem at the mesoscale and submesoscale (100 km–1 km). The causes and consequences of physical processes at these scales ("eddy advection") influencing biogeochemistry have received much attention. Less studied, the nonlinear nature of most ecological and biogeochemical interactions means that such spatial variability has consequences for regional estimates of processes including primary production and grazing, independent of the physical processes. This effect has been termed "eddy reactions." Models remain our most powerful tools for extrapolating hypotheses for biogeochemistry to global scales and to permit future projections. The spatial resolution of most climate and global biogeochemical models means that processes at the mesoscale and submesoscale are poorly resolved. Modeling work has previously suggested that the neglected eddy reactions may be almost as large as the mean field estimates in some cases. This study seeks to quantify the relative size of eddy and mean reactions observationally, using in situ and satellite data. For primary production, grazing, and zooplankton mortality the eddy reactions are between 7% and 15% of the mean reactions. These should be regarded as preliminary estimates to encourage further observational estimates and not taken as a justification for ignoring eddy reactions. Compared to modeling estimates, there are inconsistencies in the relative magnitude of eddy reactions and in correlations which are a major control on their magnitude. One possibility is that models exhibit much stronger spatial correlations than are found in reality, effectively amplifying the magnitude of eddy reactions.


Author(s): Boehle, Anna Lee | Advisor(s): Larkin, James E | Abstract: In this thesis, I explore the environments around supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in the nearby universe. The thesis is divided into five chapters. I begin with an introduction to SMBHs in general and to the astronomical instrumentation that is used to study their direct environments in the highest possible detail. The second chapter focuses on the closest galactic nucleus to Earth: the center of our own Milky Way galaxy. The orbits of stars around the Milky Way SMBH, Sgr A*, can be used to determine the black hole mass and distance. I present a new method of analyzing images of the Galactic center to increase the time baseline for faint, short-period stars that orbit Sgr A*. I use this new analysis method to improve the constraints on the mass of the SMBH and the distance to the Galactic center by a factor of 2. The second chapter discusses the upgrade of the detector in the OSIRIS instrument at W.M. Keck Observatory. This adaptive-optics-fed instrument uses an array of small lenses to sample a rectangular section of the focal plane, producing up to 3,000 spectra simultaneously with a spectral resolution of 3,800 and diffraction-limited spatial resolution. I helped to upgrade the original near-infrared (NIR) Hawaii-2 detector to a Hawaii-2RG, which improved the raw sensitivity of OSIRIS by a factor of 2 at J-band wavelengths (1.2 - 1.4 μm) and 1.6 at H- and K-band wavelengths (1.5 - 2.4 microns). The third and fourth chapters discuss a NIR integral field spectroscopic survey of nearby LINER (low ionization nuclear emission line) galaxies, the lowest luminosity class of active galactic nuclei. LINERs are found at the centers of ∼1/3 of galaxies within 40 Mpc, but it is unclear whether accretion onto a supermassive black hole or another mechanism such as shock excitation drives their emission. I use the OSIRIS instrument to map the strength and kinematics of singly ionized iron, molecular hydrogen, and hydrogen recombination lines at spatial scales of 1-10 pc in the nuclei of 11 nearby LINERs, in close proximity to their central SMBHs. The third chapter presents a detailed study of the closest LINER in the sample, NGC 404, in which I find that its LINER emission is likely excited by shocks, and the final chapter presents results from the survey sample as a whole.


The microwave remote sensing system is the broadest tool use to get information about the earth's objects in the form of images. These images are very much affected by various noises, which affects the precision of the images. These, in turn, affect the information present in it. To improve, the quality of satellite images, denoising of the image is an essential task. Gaussian noise majorly seen in all remotely sensed images. Natural sources cause this noise during the acquisition of the image. Many Researchers used Numerous types of filtering techniques to reduce such noises. In this paper, we have focused on lowering Gaussian noise from the microwave satellite dataset. To minimise Gaussian noise, the spatial domain Gaussian Low Pass Filter (GLPF) with different window sizes applied to a single Polarized (HH) L-band ALOS PALSAR satellite SLC level-1 Datasets. The results of filtered images are evaluated based on the respective mean, standard deviation and coefficient of variance.


The purpose of this tutorial is to provide an introduction to reinforcement learning (RL) at a level easily understood by students and researchers in a wide range of disciplines. The intent is not to present a rigorous mathematical discussion that requires a great deal of effort on the part of the reader, but rather to present a conceptual framework that might serve as an introduction to a more rigorous study of RL. The fundamental principles and techniques used to solve RL problems are presented. The most popular RL algorithms are presented. Section 1 presents an overview of RL and provides a simple example to develop intuition of the underlying dynamic programming mechanism. In Section 2 the parts of a reinforcement learning problem are discussed. These include the environment, reinforcement function, and value function. Section 3 gives a description of the most widely used reinforcement learning algorithms. These include TD(λ) and both the residual and direct forms of value iteration, Q-learning, and advantage learning. In Section 4 some of the ancillary issues in RL are briefly discussed, such as choosing an exploration strategy and an appropriate discount factor. The conclusion is given in Section 5. Finally, Section 6 is a glossary of commonly used terms followed by references in Section 7 and a bibliography of RL applications in Section 8. The tutorial structure is such that each section builds on the information provided in previous sections. It is assumed that the reader has some knowledge of learning algorithms that rely on gradient descent (such as the backpropagation of errors algorithm).


ABSTRACT Domestication had a dramatic influence on the cultural evolution of human histories, and on the biological evolution of domesticated species. Domestic dogs occurred earlier in the Americas than other domesticated animals. Older records in the continent come from North America, dated 11 000-8400 years BP, and in the Andes from 5600-5000 years BP. In order to present an overview of human-dog interaction in the Americas, and to identify gaps in knowledge of this subject, we reviewed 178 publications on zooarchaeological record of burials, genetics, morphology, and ethnological information of American dogs, revisiting the history and interactions across the continent. There is no evidence of an in situ dog initial domestication. Pre-Columbian diversity in North America includes at least three varieties, whereas in South America six varieties were documented. Historical descriptions of phenotypes (e.g., humped dog) may represent an expression associated with mutations. We find that archaeological, historical, and ethnographic records reveal non-traditional uses and hybridizations with other canids. For example, the Coast Salish people exploited woolly dogs for manufacturing blankets. Dog acquisition by some Amazonian cultures began towards the end of the nineteenth century. Overall more than 41 dog breeds originated in the Americas and are currently recognized by kennel clubs. The main gap in knowledge points to the relationships between American breeds, local hybridizations, migratory routes of dogs following Indigenous peoples' social networks, historical-cultural contexts, and quantification of morphological diversity. North and Central American dogs have been more intensively studied than those from the Amazon regions or Patagonia. We find that the history of domestication in the Americas is far from simple and integrative studies are needed.


Parallel file systems are gaining in popularity in high-end computing centers as well as commercial data centers. High-end computing systems are expected to scale exponentially and to pose new challenges to their storage scalability in terms of cost and power. To address these challenges scientists and file system designers will need a thorough understanding of the design space of parallel file systems. Yet there exist few systematic studies of parallel file system behavior at petabyte- and exabyte scale. An important reason is the significant cost of getting access to large-scale hardware to test parallel file systems. To contribute to this understanding we are building a parallel file system simulator that can simulate parallel file systems at very large scale. Our goal is to simulate petabyte-scale parallel file systems on a small cluster or even a single machine in reasonable time and fidelity. With this simulator, file system experts will be able to tune existing file systems for specific workloads, scientists and file system deployment engineers will be able to better communicate workload requirements, file system designers and researchers will be able to try out design alternatives and innovations at scale, and instructors will be able to study very large-scale parallel file system behavior in the class room. In this paper we describe our approach and provide preliminary results that are encouraging both in terms of fidelity and simulation scalability.


In marine seismic surveys to explore seafloor resources, the structure below the seafloor is estimated from the obtained sound waves, which are emitted by a marine seismic sound source and reflected or refracted between the layers below the seafloor. In order to estimate the structure below the seafloor from returned waves, information of the sound source position and the sound speed are needed. Marine seismic vibrators, which are one of the marine seismic sound sources, have some advantages such as high controllability of the frequency and phase of the sound, and oscillation at a high depth. However, when the sound source position is far from the sea surface, it becomes difficult to specify the exact position. In this paper, we propose a method to estimate the position of a marine seismic vibrator and the sound speed from obtained seismic data by formulating an optimization problem via hyperbolic Radon transform. Numerical simulations confirmed that the proposed method almost achieves theoretical lower bounds for the variances of the estimations.


The path of labour supply is a key consideration for the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). It helps to determine the overall supply capacity of the economy and therefore the amount of output that can be produced without generating excess inflationary pressure. Labour supply appears to have grown robustly since the financial crisis, as a greater number of people have retired later and more part-time workers have sought full-time jobs. Nevertheless, the recovery in the demand for labour has led to a significant erosion of labour market slack in recent years, as unemployment, labour market participation and average hours worked have all moved back towards their equilibrium levels.


Background
subjective cognitive difficulties (SCD) have been associated with a higher risk of developing dementia. However, there is large variation in the way SCD are assessed and in their associations with cognitive functioning.

Objective
to compare the agreement of different SCD measures in identifying people with SCD and to investigate whether SCD are more strongly associated with cognitive functioning, mood, subjective age or background variables.

Methods
this cross-sectional study included 206 community-dwelling people aged ≥65. SCD were assessed with individual domain specific questions and a multiple-item scaled measure. Performance on tests of memory, attention, and executive function, and ratings of mood, subjective age and demographic information were recorded.

Results
there was some classification overlap between the five measures of SCD, however of the 64 people identified as having SCD, only one person appeared in all five measures of SCD and 34 people were classified by one measure only. There were limited associations between SCD and objective cognition, with more consistent associations with mood and subjective age.

Conclusions
the conflicting evidence regarding whether SCD are related to objective cognition and future risk of dementia may be due to different measures of SCD being employed. Careful consideration and standardisation is recommended regarding the cognitive domains and the reference groups for comparison, the response structure and the classification criteria. Longitudinal studies of SCD that include these considerations are needed to clarify the conceptual utility of SCD.


Bid prices were elicited for standard-label cookies, muffins, and potato chips and those identified as not including genetically modified (GM) ingredients using an experimental auction. Including a statement that the product did not include GM ingredients increased bids over those offered for standard-label products. Providing negative-biased information about the impact of GM crops on the environment increased the risk participants associated with GM foods, and positive-biased information decreased perceived risk. Overall, providing impact information, whether positive- or negative-biased, increased bids for products presumed GM. The influence of information bias on bids varied among selected participant groups, supporting the presence of uniquely responsive market segments.


The results of investigations into the effect of microinjections of a number of adrenocholino- and dophaminergic agents on excitability of the pale globe, caudate nucleus and shell are reported. The non-uniformity of the effects produced by the agents of the mediator type action is established both in different segments and in individual zones of the extrapyramidal system with continuous concurrent antagonism between the mimetics and the corresponding blocking agents. The presence of alpha- and beta-adrenoreceptors and also of M- and N-cholinoreceptors in the structures of the striopallidal complex is suggested.


A wireless sensor network's lifetime is influenced directly by the sensors power management that composes the network. The models applied to the problem aims to optimize the energy usage managing the sensors activation in time intervals, activating only the minimum number of sensors respecting the coverage and connectivity restrictions. However, this problem's class has a significant computational complexity and many applications. It is necessary to implement methodologies to find the optimal solution, increasing the network's size, becoming closer to the real ones. This research's objective is to present a method based on a Partition Heuristic aggregating the Generate and Solve method, improving the results, and increasing the network's instances size, while maintaining the flexibility and reliability when applied to the homogeneous wireless sensors networks with coverage and connectivity restrictions.


Recent advances in graphics processing units (GPUs) have resulted in massively parallel hardware that is easily programmable and widely available in commodity desktop computer systems. GPUs typically use single-instruction, multiple-data (SIMD) pipelines to achieve high performance with minimal overhead incurred by control hardware. Scalar threads are grouped together into SIMD batches, sometimes referred to as warps. While SIMD is ideally suited for simple programs, recent GPUs include control flow instructions in the GPU instruction set architecture and programs using these instructions may experience reduced performance due to the way branch execution is supported by hardware. One approach is to add a stack to allow different SIMD processing elements to execute distinct program paths after a branch instruction. The occurrence of diverging branch outcomes for different processing elements significantly degrades performance. In this paper, we explore mechanisms for more efficient SIMD branch execution on GPUs. We show that a realistic hardware implementation that dynamically regroups threads into new warps on the fly following the occurrence of diverging branch outcomes improves performance by an average of 20.7% for an estimated area increase of 4.7%.


Taking the price of grain in Guizhou Province as an example, by establishing GARCH model, I calculate VAR of logarithm return of grain price index, in order to conduct research on the variation law of price of the agricultural products. The results show that VAR of grain in Guizhou has variation. After the year 2010, VAR value is gradually increasing, and the price variation risk of grain market tends to increase progressively. Based on the characteristics of grain price variation, a series of corresponding proposals are put forward to stabilize the grain price as follows: strengthen the agricultural infrastructure construction, and promote the agricultural overall production capacity; reinforce the market supervision on the circulation field of agricultural products, and maintain market order; improve regulation system of agricultural products, and stabilize the price of agricultural products; strengthen mobility regulation, and prevent a flood of speculative cash.


District heating has the potential to provide consumers with heat using resources that would otherwise be wasted (e.g. surplus heat from industry) or increase overall efficiency by generating both heat and electricity. However, the introduction and utilisation of district heating has to be performed in a responsible way in order to benefit all the different stakeholders involved. A positive outcome depends on local preconditions and the identification of trade-offs involving different environmental, social and economic considerations. In the history of district heating, several illustrative articulations of sustainability can be found, and situations in which different trade-offs have become clear. This chapter will discuss some articulations of sustainability and the environmental, social and economic trade-offs that can be identified for district heat distribution systems, to help achieve a deeper understanding of sustainability considerations and trade-offs for technical systems in general. Examples from research on district heating, carried out at Chalmers University of Technology from 1991 until today, will be used to illustrate real-world dilemmas.


Abstract : IN DIGITAL COMPUTATIONS, ERRORS RESULTING FROM SAMPLING AND AMPLITUDE QUANTIZATION (round off) are unavoidable. This work evaluates the mean-square error caused by sampling and quantization at the output of a linear network which contains a single quantizer. A detailedANSWER IS GIVEN TO THE QUESTION: Given quantized samples of a signal which is a sample function of a random process, what is the optimum linear filter for recovering the signal from its samples. This filter is determined and its characteristics are summarized graphically for a specific example. A comparison with the conventional hold graphically for a specific example. A comparison with the conventional hold circuit shows that the optimum filter is much better if high accuracy is required and quantization is coarse. The difference in performance between the two filters is small when the accuracy requirement is low and the quantization is fine. Also included as an appendix is a survey of the general quantization errors problem, as it appears in the areas of digital computation and numerical analysis, and a study of multi-quantizer networks. It is found that extension of the method to networks which contain more than one quantizer is impractical, if not impossible. (Author)


BACKGROUND
Chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps (CRSwNP) is a common inflammatory disorder associated with lower airway disease. However, only few studies of CRSwNP from outside secondary/tertiary care centres have been published. We recently reported an asthma frequency of 44% and 65% in primary and secondary care patients respectively. Therefore, we hypothesise that inflammation of the lower airways could be present in all CRSwNP patients, even without asthma. Here, we assessed the degree of lower and upper airway inflammation using exhaled and nasal nitric oxide (NO) in primary care CRSwNP patients with and without asthma.

METHODS
Fifty-seven patients who met the EPOS criteria for CRSwNP were prospectively recruited from primary care ear, nose and throat clinics. Nasal endoscopy was performed by an ear, nose and throat specialist upon enrolment. Additionally, 30 healthy controls were enrolled. Expiratory and nasal NO measurements and thorough pulmonary evaluation were performed. Pulmonary disease was diagnosed by a respiratory physician.

RESULTS
Fifty-nine percent of CRSwNP patients with asthma showed elevated expiratory NO; the same was seen in 29% of non-asthmatic CRSwNP patients. Compared with controls, a high level of exhaled NO was significantly more prevalent in CRSwNP irrespective of asthma-status. Nasal NO was significantly lower in patients with CRSwNP compared with controls.

CONCLUSION
Subclinical eosinophilic lower airway inflammation is common in CRSwNP in the primary sector, even in the absence of asthma.


In this study, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and chemometric analysis were carried out to determine the geographical origin of kudzu root and detect and quantify adulterants in kudzu root. A total of 150 natural kudzu root samples from five different geographical origins and 750 adulterated kudzu root samples with different doping levels ranging from 2% to 50% (w/w) were investigated via FTIR and then subjected to pattern recognition processes. Regardless of whether the kudzu root samples were pure or adulterated, the principal component analysis (PCA) showed clustering trends for both types of sample. Compared with PCA, better classification results were obtained with partial least-squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) using the second derivative to preprocess the infrared spectral data. The analysis of authentic kudzu root samples with different geographical origins achieved a recognition rate as high as 99% for training sets and a 98% recognition rate for predicted sets. For the adulterated kudzu root samples, PLS-DA obtained a 100% recognition rate for training sets and a 97% recognition rate for predicted sets. The high recognition and satisfactory predictive capability of the PLS-DA model proved that the proposed method was a non-targeted, powerful, and practical tool, which was suitable for tracing the geographic origin of kudzu root and quantifying adulterants in kudzu root products.


ABSTRACT The chloroviruses (family Phycodnaviridae), unlike most viruses, encode some, if not most, of the enzymes involved in the glycosylation of their structural proteins. Annotation of the gene product B736L from chlorovirus NY-2A suggests that it is a glycosyltransferase. The structure of the recombinantly expressed B736L protein was determined by X-ray crystallography to 2.3-Å resolution, and the protein was shown to have two nucleotide-binding folds like other glycosyltransferase type B enzymes. This is the second structure of a chlorovirus-encoded glycosyltransferase and the first structure of a chlorovirus type B enzyme to be determined. B736L is a retaining enzyme and belongs to glycosyltransferase family 4. The donor substrate was identified as GDP-mannose by isothermal titration calorimetry and was shown to bind into the cleft between the two domains in the protein. The active form of the enzyme is probably a dimer in which the active centers are separated by about 40 Å.


We study the dynamics of the cubic–quintic nonlinear Schrodinger equation by the symplectic method. The behaviors of the equation are discussed with harmonically modulated initial conditions, and the contributions from the quintic term are discussed. We observe the elliptic orbit, homoclinic orbit crossing, quasirecurrence, and stochastic motion with different nonlinear parameters in this system. Numerical simulations show that the changing processes of the motion of the system and the trajectories in the phase space are various for different cubic nonlinear parameters with the increase of the quintic nonlinear parameter.


Recently, there has been an outburst of research on engineered cell–material interfaces driven by nano-technology and its tools and techniques. This tutorial review begins by providing a brief introduction to nanostructured materials, followed by an overview of the wealth of nanoscale fabrication and analysis tools available for their development. This background serves as the basis for a discussion of early break-throughs and recent key developments in the endeavour to develop nanostructured materials as smart interfaces for fundamental cellular studies, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. The review covers three major aspects of nanostructured interfaces – nanotopographical control, dynamic behaviour and intracellular manipulation and sensing – where efforts are continuously being made to further understand cell function and provide new ways to control cell behaviour. A critical reflection of the current status and future challenges are discussed as a conclusion to the review.


Uncertainty surrounding the potential environmental impacts of marine energy (ME) has resulted in extensive and expensive environmental monitoring requirements for ME deployments. Recently, there have been more ME deployments and associated environmental data collection efforts, but no standardized methodologies for data collection. This hinders the use of previously collected data to inform new ME project permitting efforts. Triton Field Trials (TFiT), created at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory by the United States (U.S.) Department of Energy, explores ways to promote more consistent environmental data collection and enable data transferability across ME device types and locations. Documents from 118 previous ME projects or ME-related research studies in the U.S. and internationally were reviewed to identify the highest priority stressor–receptor relationships to be investigated and the technologies and methodologies used to address them. Thirteen potential field sites were assessed to determine suitable locations for testing the performance of relevant monitoring technologies. This introductory paper provides an overview of how priority research areas and associated promising technologies were identified as well as how testing locations were identified for TFiT activities. Through these scoping efforts, TFiT focused on four activity areas: collision risk, underwater noise, electromagnetic fields, and changes in habitat. Technologies and methodologies were tested at field sites in Alaska, Washington, California, and New Hampshire. Detailed information on the effectiveness of the identified methodologies and specific recommendations for each of the four focus areas are included in the companion papers in this Special Issue.


OBJECTIVE
Fear of negative evaluation has been proposed as a transdiagnostic factor associated with the development of eating disorders and has been shown to relate to disorders of body image, especially those with weight/shape concerns such as eating disorders and muscle dysmorphia. The current study aimed to investigate whether fear of negative evaluation was a transdiagnostic factor of disorders diagnostically characterized by weight/shape concerns. The study examined whether fear of negative evaluation was associated with higher odds for meeting criteria for an eating disorder and/or muscle dysmorphia, especially those disorders diagnostically characterized by weight/shape concerns.

METHOD
Data were used from a subgroup of the first wave of the EveryBODY study, a longitudinal investigation of eating disorders and body image concerns among Australian adolescents (N = 4,030). Participants completed measures on demographics, weight/shape concerns, disordered eating, psychological distress, muscularity concerns, and fear of negative evaluation.

RESULTS
Findings revealed that fear of negative evaluation was associated with higher odds of meeting criteria for any eating disorder but significantly more so for those characterized by weight/shape concerns diagnostically, as well as binge-eating disorder. Similar results were found for muscle dysmorphia.

DISCUSSION
The findings suggest that fear of negative evaluation constitutes a transdiagnostic feature for developing and/or maintaining an eating disorder.


Because ecosystems throughout the globe are contaminated with pesticides, there is a need to understand how natural populations cope with pesticides and the implications for ecological interactions. From an evolutionary perspective, there is evidence that pesticide tolerance can be achieved via two mechanisms: selection for constitutive tolerance over multiple generations or by inducing tolerance within a single generation via phenotypic plasticity. While both mechanisms can allow organisms to persist in contaminated environments, they might result in different performance trade‐offs including population susceptibility to parasites. We have identified 15 wood frog populations that exist along a gradient from close to agriculture and high, constitutive pesticide tolerance to far from agriculture and inducible pesticide tolerance. Using these populations, we investigated the relationship between evolutionary responses to the common insecticide carbaryl and host susceptibility to the trematode Echinoparyphium lineage 3 and ranavirus using laboratory exposure assays. For Echinoparyphium, we discovered that wood frog populations living closer to agriculture with high, constitutive tolerance experienced lower loads than populations living far from agriculture with inducible pesticide tolerance. For ranavirus, we found no relationship between the mechanism of evolved pesticide tolerance and survival, but populations living closer to agriculture with high, constitutive tolerance experienced higher viral loads than populations far from agriculture with inducible tolerance. Land use and mechanisms of evolved pesticide tolerance were associated with susceptibility to parasites, but the direction of the relationship is dependent on the type of parasite, underscoring the complexity between land use and disease outcomes. Collectively, our results demonstrate that evolved pesticide tolerance can indirectly influence host–parasite interactions and underscores the importance of including evolutionary processes in ecotoxicological studies.


In the present paper, by considering nonlinear integral operators and using their approximations via regular summability methods, we obtain characterizations for some function spaces including the space of absolutely continuous functions, the space of uniformly continuous functions, and their other variants. We observe that Bell-type summability methods are quite effective to generalize and improve some related results in the literature. At the end of the paper, we discuss some special cases and applications.


Long-term sustainable port development requires accounting for the intrinsic values of ecosystems. However, in practice, ecosystem considerations often only enter the planning and design process of ports when required by an Environmental Impact Assessment. At this late stage, most of the design is already fixed and opportunities to minimize and restore ecosystem impacts are limited. In this paper, we adopt a large-scale, ecosystem perspective on port development with the aim to identify ecosystem-based design alternatives earlier and throughout the planning and design of a port's marine infrastructure. We present a framework, termed the 'ecosystem-based port design hierarchy' (EPDH), to identify ecosystem-based alternatives at four hierarchical design levels: 1) alternatives to port developments, 2) port site selection, 3) port layout design, and 4) design of structures and materials. In applying the EPDH framework retrospectively to a case study of port expansion in Tema, Ghana, we establish that ecosystem considerations played only a limited role in identifying and evaluating alternatives at all four design levels in the case study, whereas more eco-friendly alternatives in terms of port layouts, structures, and materials are identified using the EPDH framework. This reveals that opportunities for ecosystem-friendly port designs may have been missed and demonstrates the need for and the potential added value of our framework. The framework can assist practitioners in earlier and wider identification of ecosystem-based alternatives for a port's marine infrastructure in future seaport developments and, hence, represents an important step towards more sustainable port designs.


The significance of natural gas is on the rise due to the restructuring and decarbonization of energy systems worldwide. Natural gas is widely available and flexible as it can be used in electricity generation, manufacturing, transport, and private households. Compared to other fossil fuels, natural gas produces relatively low carbon dioxide emissions during combustion. For this reason, the natural gas sector also has an important supportive role to play when it comes to the European energy transition towards renewable energies. Against this backdrop, DIW Berlin has examined the potential of the global natural gas market and carried out model-based analyses of possible scenarios for meeting different climate change targets. The structural shift in the international natural gas market that has been observed for some years now is also set to continue in the medium and long term. While the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, particularly Qatar, will remain swing suppliers due to their geographical location, Russia's significance in supplying Europe will decline in the future. New techniques such as fracking enable the exploitation of unconventional natural gas resources, which could potentially see the US become a strong natural gas exporter and also give other regions around the world the opportunity to extract their own natural gas. However, in Europe, the potential for additional production of domestic resources by extracting shale gas through fracking is rather limited for technical reasons and due to a lack of political support in the context of an adequate international natural gas supply. Asian demand for natural gas is expected to strongly rise as a result of the ever-increasing appetite for energy generated by economic growth. This demand region will absorb the major share of future natural gas trade. In Europe, the situation could develop along a number of different trajectories, depending on whether natural gas is used as a "bridge fuel" in the transition toward an energy system based on renewable energies or as a complement to fluctuating renewable power generation in the long term.


This paper proposes a clock strategy to improve the precision of power-efficient readout circuit for capacitive sensor. To achieve high power efficiency, capacitive sensor such as MEMS accelerometer is designed with open-loop architecture rather than close-loop one. In the open-loop architecture, the capacitance variation of sensing element is limited to femto-farad level in order to overcome nonlinearity problem. However, due to this limitation, the signal charge from sensing element is weak and the interference charge due to coupling capacitance between clock wires and sensing electrodes becomes a significant issue. Therefore, split clock bus is employed to meet this challenge, but the split clock bus introduces the timing mismatch which causes the charge injection sensitive to fabrication process and circuit operating voltage. As a result, the input offset, the variation of the offset and the nonlinearity of readout circuit will increase, and this will lead to reduction of precision. In this work, a clock scheme named "multi-nested clocks" is proposed to address the charge injection problem. The multi-nested clocks are demonstrated in a readout circuit fabricated using a $0.18-\mu \text{m}$ BCD process. The measurement results show that compared to the readout circuit using traditional clock, the readout circuit using the multi-nested clocks significantly reduces the equivalent input offset from 1.66fF to 0.25fF, the offset variation from 1.4fF to 0.2fF and the nonlinearity from 5.5% to 0.9%.


Background: This study was designed to identify vitamin D deficiency and its related factors among the elderly with CHF. Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 50 elderly patients (26 women and 24 men) hospitalized with CHF and 50 elderly without CHF were randomly selected. The two groups were matched for age and sex and those who had taken vitamin D in the last six months were excluded from the study. Data were collected using a questionnaire which its content validity and reliability were confirmed. The level of 25- hydroxy vitamin D was measured using the ELIZA method.Results: The mean vitamin D levels in elderly with and without CHF were 33.76±2.82 and 41.76±3.06, respectively and there was no significant difference in vitamin D levels between the two groups. Among patients with vitamin D deficiency, weight gain (P=0.031), intestinal (P=0.022) and renal problems (P=0.031), in CHF patients were more than those without CHF. Conclusion: Considering the high prevalence of vitamin D deficiency among the elderly with CHF, it is necessary to monitor the vitamin D level in these patients.


Museum of the University of Bucharest represents the cultural memory and the institutional identity in the specific field of higher education in Romania. But this mission needs to be adapted to the public nowadays, in cultural contexts that are different from those of the last century, when the museum was founded.
The impact of an university museum in society is increasingly based on the diversification of communication paths, with the use of the new media, on the development of new audiences for whom the museum's message is relevant. Also, the university museum must investigate future development directions and opportunities, to be a dynamic and vivid institution.
The 21st Century brings with it new and increasingly complex methods of communication for all University Museums, especially ones that allow the public to manage their intellectual needs in their own, customized way. That being said, we're talking about communication through the museum's institutional site, via the various social media platforms, through the online catalogue and portal, which grant access to information regarding the museum's collection. Other interactive elements developed in the 21st century are represented by QR codes, by virtual or augmented reality, these digital breakthroughs being a way for museums not only to attract new types of public, but also to complete the information by making it multisensorial.
Our research shows how the aspects mentioned above and others represent the challenges to which the University of Bucharest Museum had to find adequate answers in order to fulfill its mission.


This article contributes to the developing recognition that the challenges raised by the enterprise of translating between languages extend beyond human language. It suggests that there are parallels between the political issues recognised by translation scholars – of exclusion, misrepresentation and speaking for 'the other' – and those raised by biosemiotics, the study of signs in all living systems. Following a discussion of convergence in current developments in translation studies, semiotics and human-animal studies, the article presents an analysis of empirical data, with specific reference to the different meanings of the verb hear. The findings demonstrate the anthropocentric assumptions that are embedded in the way hearing is routinely represented, and an argument is presented for the recognition of these in communications about the semiotic resources relevant to non-human life forms. The paper concludes with some reflections on the implications of these issues for the enterprise of translation.


How can educators make use of augmented reality technologies and practices to enhance learning and why would we want to embrace such technologies anyway? How can an augmented reality help a learner confront, interpret and ultimately comprehend reality itself ? In this article, we seek to initiate a discussion that focuses on these questions, and suggest that they be used as drivers for research into effective educational applications of augmented reality. We discuss how multi-modal, sensorial augmentation of reality links to existing theories of education and learning, focusing on ideas of cognitive dissonance and the confrontation of new realities implied by exposure to new and varied perspectives. We also discuss connections with broader debates brought on by the social and cultural changes wrought by the increased digitalisation of our lives, especially the concept of the extended mind. Rather than offer a prescription for augmentation, our intention is to throw open debate and to provoke deep thinking about what interacting with and creating an augmented reality might mean for both teacher and learner. Keywords: augmented reality; immersive learning; cognitive dissonance; variation theory; constructionism; international; moving learners; pioneering uses; enthusing learners; mainstreaming (Published: 30 August 2012) http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v20i0.19189


Purpose: To analyze the correlation of ocular higher-order aberrations (HOAs) and mesopic pupil size (MPS) with age and gender in myopic patients screened for refractive surgery Methods: Ocular HOAs and MPS were examined in 1,641 females eyes and 749 males eyes with myopia and also in two different age groups, under 30-year-old (1,675 eyes) and over 30-year-old (715 eyes), using the Zywave aberrometer (Busch & Lomb) wavefront aberrometer. Root-meansquare (RMS) values of HOA and MPS were analyzed. All patients had correctable refractive error without history of refractive surgery or underlying diseases. Pupil size measurement was performed under mesopic condition and ocular HOAs were examined across a ≥6.0 mm pupil. Results: The mean value of HOAs in 18-30-year-old group was 0.354±0.137 μm (range, 0.10 to 0.97 μm) and in over 30-year-old group was 0.417±0.158 μm (range, 0.10 to 0.99 μm) (P<0.001). The difference of HOAs between males and females was not significant. The mean value of MPS in 18-30-year-old group was 6.36±0.90 mm (range, 3.1 to 8.9 mm) and in over 30-year-old group was 5.60±0.99 mm (range, 2.8 to 8.5 mm) (P<0.001). The mean value of MPS in females group was 6.10±0.98 mm (range, 2.8 to 8.7 mm) and in males group was 6.20±1.01 mm (range, 2.8 to 8.9 mm) (P=0.010). Conclusion: Significant levels of HOAs were found in our population. The mean value of HOAs in older subjects had statistically significant greater levels, while there was no difference between males and females. Young men had the highest value of MPS.


The glaring failure of modern macroeconomics to predict the Global Financial Crisis, and to provide remedies for the Great Recession which followed, has led to renewed interest in alternative approaches to Macroeconomics. There is huge amount of ongoing work aimed at creating a Macroeconomics for the 21st Century. The task is of the highest priority, as failures of economic theory have led to misery for millions. Wrong measures of GDP, and cost-benefit calculation which fail to account for environmental costs, and prioritize private profits over social welfare, have created a climate catastrophe which threatens to destroy the planet. In accordance with the importance of this task, we are expanding the scope of this journal, to cover all new approaches to economics, which fall outside of the boxes of conventional macro, micro, and econometrics of the 20th Century. This article outlines seven broad categories of research directions, and four different methodological principles which fall outside the boundaries of the conventional approach, and offer promise for building a Macroeconomics for the 21st Century. We hope to invite contributions in these areas for future issues.


: OBJECTIVE: To know how medicines should be administered, to detect if there are any interaction whith food and the most frequent errors. METHOD: A descriptive study has been carried out in two health centres where we have evaluated if the oral medicines have been correctly dispensed. So as to do this, the summary of medicines' characteristics and/or medicine prospects were used. RESULTS: The daily administered medication for 40 patients was evaluated during one day in two different hospitals. We administered 274 medicines in hospital A and 238 medicines in hospital B wich correspond to 344 and 330 oral dosis. In hospital A 138 (23,4%) mistakes were made and another 65 potential errors were detected. It is unsure if these potential errors were made or not as we do not know if the medication was taken correctly by the patient. In hospital B 95 (25,0%) errors were committed. No other possible errors were observed. The most frequent errors that have been commited are: not to dilute the medication with water, to administer the medicine with milk and/or antiacid medicine, to take medicine with meals instead of taking them in abstinence. Not warning the pacient to swallow medicines without chewing them. Other errors were concerning the relationship between medication and meals. DISCUSSION: Many of the mistakes that are made when taking medicines are due to the lack of knowledge of the correct usage or lack of information.


The transmission function of twin core fibre is determined by his fibre length and coupling length if only one of its cores is excited. For design of attenuation components or sensors it is useful known transmission dependence twin core fibres on coupling length variations, because the coupling length depends on difference of effective propagation phase constants appertaining to particular fibre cores. It is possible to change tham by such deformation, which influences the difference of effective phase constants. For this purpose twin core fibres with one core in the centre of fibre are applicable. The simple deformation of fibre in torsion changes the length (and also effective propagation phase constant) of core located out of centre of fibre. The measuring dependencies of the influence of torsion on transmission functions for different values of twist make possible ease interpretation. Their agreement (or disagreement) with description following from theory may be possible indication of eventual misalignment of cores what is important for design of attenuation components with control attenuation or sensors.


The multifunctional nanocompoties (MFNCs) as drug release carriers are prepared by cross-linking reaction of cationic chitosan (CS) and anionic tripolyphosphate (TPP) to encapsulate Fe3O4 nanoparticles(NPs) loaded cancer therapeutic agents such as berberine (BB), KCY-24B, KCY-Tai…etc were studied. These MFNCs were characterized by fourier transform infrared spectrophotometer (FT-IR), ultra violet–visible-near infrared spectrophotometer (UV-VIS-NIR spectrophotometer), size analysis, transmission electron microscope (TEM) and field-emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM). Then we obtained here the preparation method, characterization, and capability of these efficative nanoparticles. Cell celluar uptake and distribution of MFNCs were also inspected in human colon adenocarcinoma cell lines (Colo 205).


New records of marine mites of the family Pontarachnidae Koenike, 1910 (Acari: Hydrachnidia) from the southern Black Sea (Sinop bay, Turkey) are presented. Two species, i.e., Pontarachna valkanovi Petrova, 1978 and Pontarachna adriatica Morselli, 1980 are recorded for the first time from Turkey. These are the first records of these species after its orginal description. Our study shows ecological differences between these species: Pontarachna valkanovi were collected from 3 m depth, while P. adraitica seems to be characteristic for deeper waters (10 m depth).


OBJECTIVE
To assess the effectiveness of an intervention after comprehensive geriatric assessment (CGA) in reducing morbidity and mortality in patients over 74 years in primary care.

METHODS
Randomized controlled trial with 18 months of follow-up. Patients in the control group (CG) followed usual care. Patients in the intervention group (IG) were classified as at risk or non-risk of frailty based on the CGA. Patients at non-risk of frailty in the IG were provided with recommendations about healthy habits and adherence to treatment in group sessions, while patients at risk of frailty were visited individually by a geriatrician.

RESULTS
Six hundred and twenty patients were randomized to the IG (49.7%) or to the CG (50.3%), 83.2% completed follow-up. Cox's proportional hazards model showed as covariates the study group (hazard ratio [HR] 0.58; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.28-1.22), risk of frailty (HR 1.33; 95% CI 0.71-2.51) and the interaction between both (HR 3.08; 95% CI 1.22-7.78). Forty-nine percent of the patients in the IG and 43% in the CG were at risk of frailty at baseline. At the end of the study, 27.9% of the IG and 13.5% of the CG had reversed their initial at risk of frailty status (P = 0.027). Multivariate predictors of reversible risk of frailty were younger age, not being at risk of depression, low consumption of medications and the intervention itself.

CONCLUSIONS
A specific intervention in patients over 74 years attended in primary care reduces morbidity and mortality in patients at risk of frailty and increases the proportion of patients that reversed their initial status at risk of frailty.


Much has been written about the etiology and pathology of tuberculosis of the larynx. I shall not repeat this, but shall review some of my practical experience with about six hundred cases of tuberculosis of the larynx during the past ten years. The large amount of material with which I have had the opportunity to work enabled me to use a number of new methods for the first time in this country. Tuberculosis of the larynx is sadly neglected both by the general practitioner and by the laryngologist. It is often looked on as a fatal complication arising during active pulmonary tuberculosis. It is my opinion, however, not only that in a large number of cases laryngeal tuberculosis can be cured but that there are many cases in which the active treatment contributes largely to the improvement and ultimate cure of the underlying pulmonary condition. Such cases, of course,


: There have been several highly significant achievements in the area of alternatives for skin corrosivity testing in the last three years, most notably: (a) the validation, and subsequent endorsement, of two replacement alternative tests for skin corrosivity (the rat skin transcutaneous electrical resistance [TER] and EPISKINtrade mark human skin model assays) by the European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods (ECVAM); (b) an evaluation of the proposed OECD testing strategy for skin corrosion/irritation as it relates to the classification of corrosives; (c) completion of a successful prevalidation study on the use of the EpiDermtrade mark human skin model for corrosivity testing; (d) a review of CORROSITEXtrade mark by the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods (ICCVAM) in the US; and (e) the submission of draft new test guidelines on skin corrosion to the OECD Secretariat and EU National Coordinators (Annex V test methods). It is now hoped that regulatory acceptance of the validated in vitro tests for skin corrosivity, at both EU and OECD levels, will be secured as quickly as possible.


Introduction:
 In 2003, the Joint Commission (JC) began certifying hospitals as Primary Stroke Centers (PSC). One of the key components of PSC certification is preparedness to administer rt-PA. Data regarding the impact of stroke center certification on rt-PA utilization is limited. We sought to compare rates of rt-PA use at JC-certified PSC's to non-PSC's, and to evaluate the impact of certification on rt-PA treatment rates, at the hospital level.

 Methods:
 This analysis utilized the MEDPAR database, which is a claims-based dataset containing every fee-for-service Medicare-eligible hospital discharge in the U.S. Ischemic stroke cases were defined via ICD-9 code of 433, 434, or 436. Thrombolysis use was defined as an ICD-9 procedure code of 99.1. Study interval was FY 2001-2010. Hospitals were stratified by ischemic stroke case volume. Date of original certification was obtained from the JC. For the temporal analysis, rt-PA utilization rates at each PSC were evaluated by quarter for three years pre- and post-certification. For comparison, every non-PSC was assigned a date for analysis, taken from PSC certification dates within the same case-volume class.

 Results:
 Of 3,275 acute care hospitals included in this analysis, 668 were JC certified PSCs. In FY 2010, the overall rt-PA utilization rate for the Medicare population was 2.2%, however utilization rates were significantly higher at PSC's than non-PSC's, 4.9% vs 1.5 %(P<0.0001). The difference between PSC's and non-PSC's rates was correlated with case load. Non-stroke centers admitting 10 or fewer stroke patients per quarter (n=1,058) treated 0.7% with rt-PA vs. low-volume PSCs (n=23) which treated 6.7% (p=0.0003). Non-PSC's admitting more than 75 stroke patients per quarter (n=54) treated at a rate more similar to their PSC counterparts, (n=113), 3.2% vs. 4.6% (p=0.0031). The temporal relationship between certification and rt-PA utilization is displayed in the
 >Figure
 . Rt-PA utilization rates at PSC's increased at a higher rate than non-PSC's, 0.13% per quarter vs 0.02% per quarter (p<0.0001).

 Discussion:
 Compared to non-PSCs,JC certified PSCs utilize rt-PA on a higher proportion of IS patients, although the differences are the most striking in low-volume hospitals. Hospitals that sought PSC certification had similar baseline utilization rates to non-PSC's. PSC's increased rt-PA utilization rates prior to certification and this increase continued for three years post-certification. A limitation of this analysis is that "drip and ship" patients are not included for PSCs or non-PSCs.


It is common practice in anthropology to use terms with implicit psychological content (such as embodiment). This is consistent with contemporary developments in anthropological theory and practice that lead to a focus on individuals' voices and practices. Nevertheless, many cultural anthropologists are critical of psychology. This introduction considers and responds to some of the usual criticisms. As this introduction describes, the articles that follow each take one term that is widely used by anthropologists (agency, resistance, subjectivity, the imaginary, and the self) and show how the concept could be better illuminated, and some published case study better explained, through the use of person-centered methods and the selective application of psychological theories.


Detecting malicious behavior is important for preventing security threats in a computer network. Denial of Service (DoS) is among the popular cyber attacks targeted at web sites of high‐profile organizations and can potentially have high economic and time costs. In this paper, several machine learning methods including ensemble models and autoencoder‐based deep learning classifiers are compared and tuned using Bayesian optimization. The autoencoder framework enables to extract new features by mapping the original input to a new space. The methods are trained and tested both for binary and multi‐class classification on Digiturk and Labris datasets, which were introduced recently for detecting various types of DDoS attacks. The best performing methods are found to be ensembles though deep learning classifiers achieved comparable level of accuracy.


If October 1917 marked the victory of a particular form of Marxism in circulation, developed in Western Europe and adapted for Russia by leaders in exile, the 1930s have been considered a period of inward retreat in comparison to the ferment of borrowing of the 1920s. Beginning in 1931, the foreign engineers and workers who manned the factories of the First Five-Year Plan were sent home. From the arts to the sciences, Soviet professionals in all fields who maintained connections to foreign specialists were increasingly subject to accusation and ultimately, to systematic repression. (1) The Great Depression in capitalist countries and belief in the successes of the First Five-Year Plan contributed to a feeling of triumph and a certainty in the superiority of the Soviet system that in turn engendered an ideological, national Bolshevism. (2) In the past 15 years, however, new research on Soviet history has shown to what extent the period of Stalin's consolidation of power remained open to borrowing. Circulation had as many implications for forms of economic organization and the administrative structure of the state as for culture (grand Stalinist cinema was Hollywood-like) or urban planning (modern functionalism was rejected in favor of a hierarchical city whose model was also sought abroad). One of the objectives of this article is to demonstrate, through five examples, that borrowing continued intensively throughout this period of official retreat and occurred in some of the most important areas of the construction of this new social system (without entering into the 1940s, however, which are much more complex and less studied, and which suggest the outline of new configurations). In so doing, this article intends to make another point. Scholarly literature on "transfers" is extremely rich. In economic, industrial, and technical as well as scientific or medical questions and in issues of architecture, literature, fine arts, and cinema, studies abound on the Soviets' practice of borrowing from the capitalist countries of Europe and from the United States. (3) These studies belong, for that matter, to a long, active, and sustained tradition going back well before the 18th century. (4) For the last 10 or so years, however, historical scholarship has made it possible to delve deeper and to move beyond the mere identification and description of transfers. At stake is a type of history close to histoire croisee, but which places greater emphasis on what circulates. Histoire croisee is extremely useful as a means of liberation from traditional methods of comparison that "reify" differences or similarities. (5) It introduces a reflexivity that allows for reciprocal questioning in every temporal and spatial dimension. Nevertheless, this approach is less sensitive to what circulates from one space to another. It is to circulation that I would now like to turn. This reflection on circulation is equivalent neither to a comparison nor to the study of transfers, nor even to histoire croisee. This approach is inspired by pioneering research on the history of the Indian subcontinent: "Circulation is different from simple mobility, inasmuch as it implies a double movement of going forth and coming back, which can be repeated indefinitely. In circulating, things, men, and notions often transform themselves. Circulation ... therefore ... implies an incremental aspect and not the simple reproduction across space of already formed structures and notions." (6) Two major traits thus distinguish the circulatory approach from the transferential: on the one hand, emphasis is placed on the transformations that the entities in circulation undergo in the process of their displacement, and on the other, attention is drawn to the effects of the return movement on the point of departure: circulation is complete, even if the phenomena placed into circulation are no longer recognizable. Circulation as a heuristic theme thus emerges at a moment when the approaches comprising the highly varied and dynamic landscape of global studies are proliferating remarkably. …


Synthetic time series generation has long been an important tool for the planning and management of water resources systems. This technique allows for a significant reduction of the uncertainty associated with hydrological phenomena. In this article a procedure is proposed for generating synthetic series of annual and monthly flows that combines two models, a probabilistic one, applied at an annual level, and at a monthly level, a deterministic disaggregation model. The modeling of the annual flow series is based on the random sampling of the log-Pearson III law of probability. The disaggregation of annual flows into monthly flows uses the method of fragments. For the application of this method, a new procedure was developed and tested for the automatic definition of the classes of fragments, reducing the need for intervention of the modeler, resulting in a more general and robust approach. The combination of the two models was tested on a data set of 54 streamflow samples from gauging stations geographically spread over Mainland Portugal. For each gauging station, 1200 synthetic series were generated, with a length equal to that of the corresponding sample. The quality of the generated series was evaluated by their capacity to preserve the most significant statistical characteristics of the samples of annual and monthly flows, namely the mean, standard deviation, and skewness coefficient. Confidence intervals were established for this evaluation, and the results show that, generally, the statistics of the samples are contained in these intervals. Thereupon it was concluded that the developed procedure is adequate.


This article discusses methodological aspects of the role of the researcher in sociolinguistic ethnographic studies with an interest in the linguistic repertoires of minorized speakers. Looking at linguistic repertoires as knowledge that is to a large extent routinized, restructuration of those repertoires is connected with communicative events that interrupt routines. In the context of such events, the speaker mobilizes remote parts of his or her repertoire and reflects on linguistic rules. Ethnographic research that involves intensive contact between the research subjects and the researcher is likely to cause these kinds of events, which I call Ausbau events. This paper argues that ethnographic linguistic research influences language use and provokes metalinguistic reflection, both of which are seen as essential for language learning. Referring to evidence from observations in a Ukrainian school in a northern Moldovan village, the article discusses methodological aspects of this interference. Ausbau events are not regarded as unnatural but rather as revealing of practices that would otherwise be inaccessible to observation. On that account, including the role of the researcher into the analysis should be seen as a chance to understand dynamic processes. Click here to read the article


Background Introduction: Endocarditis is an uncommon condition in developed countries. Incidence rates range from 4 to 7 cases per 100,000 individuals a year. The incidence of simultaneous double valve endocarditis is extremely low.

Objectives and Aims: This is a case study detailing a 67-year-old Caucasian male who was admitted for suspicion for endocarditis of which Duke Criteria were fulfilled for multi-valve endocarditis. We wish to demonstrate the usefulness of utilizing Duke's Criteria for management of endocarditis in patients with multivalve involvement. Materials and Methods: Medical records were obtained from Trios Health and Sacred Heart Medical Center after permission was obtained. All documentation and acquired articles were obtained and reviewed.

Results: The patient presented to the emergency department complaining of shortness of breath and cough. Evaluation in the emergency department resulted in a suspicion for endocarditis. He was subsequently admitted to the medical floors for management. A transesophageal echocardiogram was conducted, which demonstrated a peri-prosthetic valvular abscess on the aortic valve along with vegetations on the mitral valve. Due to positive Duke criteria for multivalve involvement, he was transferred to a tertiary referral center where he underwent surgery for valve replacement. Surgery noted an abscess with the destruction of the aortomitral continuity but no evidence of infection of the mitral valve.

Conclusion: We recommend treatment for multivalve endocardidits when Duke Criteria is satisfied. Our patient may have had a resolution of the abscess prior to surgical intervention, which can be attributed to his vigorous treatment schedule.


Andrologists sometimes experience difficulty deciding if a patient is azoospermic because of obstruction or because of testicular failure to produce sperm. When the testicular biopsy reveals that relatively small numbers of mature sperm are being produced, azoospermia may be the clinical manifestation of this condition. However, some patients who have ductal obstruction also have decreased levels of testicular sperm production ("hypospermatogenesis"). This discussion will concern: (a) the evidence that partial ductal obstruction may exist; (b) the clinical manifestations of partial ductal obstruction; (c) methods of diagnosis of partial ductal obstruction; and (d) treatment of partial ductal obstruction.


This study verifies the concept of the super-omni wedge by validating its equations for effective wedge orientation and wedge angle and by comparing the dose distributions it produces with those produced by other wedge techniques. To validate the equations, we calculated dose distributions for 20 combinations of wedge orientations and wedge angles; we then determined the differences between the wedge orientations and angles predicted by the equations and those calculated by a three-dimensional treatment-planning system. To compare the super-omni wedge concept with other techniques, we calculated the dose and position differences between the dose distributions produced by the super-omni wedge concept and those produced by other wedge techniques. The error of wedge orientations ranged from −0.5° to 0.4°, and that of wedge angles ranged from −0.6° to 1.7°. The dose distributions produced by the super-omni wedge were similar and therefore equivalent to those produced by other wedge techniques. Serving as an intermediate step in treatment-planning optimization, the super-omni wedge is a reliable method for producing wedged dose distributions with arbitrary wedge orientations and wedge angles.


We report on the light confinement effect observed in non-ideally shaped (i.e., non-spherical) nanoscale solid immersion lenses (SILs). To investigate this effect, nanostructures of various shapes are fabricated by electron-beam lithography. When completely melted in reflow, these non-circular pillars become spherical, while incomplete melting results in nonspherically shaped SILs. Optical characterization shows that non-ideal SILs exhibit a spot size reduction comparable to that of spherical SILs. When the SIL size is wavelength scale or smaller, aberrations are negligible due to the short optical path length. This insensitivity to minor variations in shape implies a large tolerance in nano-SIL fabrication.