Electron–hole pairs at the interface between electron‐donating and electron‐accepting molecules form charge‐transfer excitons (CTEs) via Coulomb attraction. Generally, the attraction energy of the CTE is weaker than that of the Frenkel exciton because of spatial separation of the charge pair; thus, the binding of the CTE is expected to be sensitive to an electric field. Here, the shielding of the binding energy of the CTEs by an internal electric field induced by spontaneous orientation polarization (SOP) of the solid‐state donor–acceptor blend film is reported. When the blend film forms a large SOP, the photogenerated CTEs spontaneously dissociate without an external electric field, resulting in carrier diffusion and carrier lifetimes that are in the milliseconds or longer. In the absence of a large SOP, the CTEs preferentially form exciplexes that quickly release their energy as light rather than dissociation. Hence, the control of SOP in the donor–acceptor blend films can provide new insights into exciton binding and facilitate the development of tailored high‐performance organic semiconductor devices.


Oleic acid and derivatives synthesized by four Δ9 stearoyl-ACP desaturases, FAB2, AAD1, AAD5, and AAD6, play critical roles during Arabidopsis embryo development and seed maturation. The spatiotemporal pattern of deposition, final amount, and relative abundance of oleic acid (cis-ω-9 C18:1) and its derivatives in the different lipid fractions of the seed of Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) indicates that omega-9 monoenes are synthesized at high rates in this organ. Accordingly, we observed that four Δ9 stearoyl-ACP desaturase (SAD)-coding genes (FATTY ACID BIOSYNTHESIS2 [FAB2], ACYL-ACYL CARRIER PROTEIN5 [AAD5], AAD1, and AAD6) are transcriptionally induced in seeds. We established that the three most highly expressed ones are directly activated by the WRINKLED1 transcription factor. We characterized a collection of 30 simple, double, triple, and quadruple mutants affected in SAD-coding genes and thereby revealed the functions of these desaturases throughout seed development. Production of oleic acid by FAB2 and AAD5 appears to be critical at the onset of embryo morphogenesis. Double homozygous plants from crossing fab2 and aad5 could never be obtained, and further investigations revealed that the double mutation results in the arrest of embryo development before the globular stage. During later stages of seed development, these two SADs, together with AAD1, participate in the elaboration of the embryonic cuticle, a barrier essential for embryo–endosperm separation during the phase of invasive embryo growth through the endosperm. This study also demonstrates that the four desaturases redundantly contribute to storage lipid production during the maturation phase.


Coverage of interest points and network connectivity are two main challenging and practically important issues of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Although many studies have exploited the mobility of sensors to improve the quality of coverage and connectivity, little attention has been paid to the minimization of sensors' movement, which often consumes the majority of the limited energy of sensors and thus shortens the network lifetime significantly. To fill in this gap, this paper addresses the challenges of the Mobile Sensor Deployment (MSD) problem and investigates how to deploy mobile sensors with minimum movement to form a WSN that provides both target coverage and network connectivity. To this end, the MSD problem is decomposed into two sub-problems: the Target COVerage (TCOV) problem and the Network CONnectivity (NCON) problem. We then solve TCOV and NCON one by one and combine their solutions to address the MSD problem. The NP-hardness of TCOV is proved. For a special case of TCOV where targets disperse from each other farther than double of the coverage radius, an exact algorithm based on the Hungarian method is proposed to find the optimal solution. For general cases of TCOV, two heuristic algorithms, i.e., the Basic algorithm based on clique partition and the TV-Greedy algorithm based on Voronoi partition of the deployment region, are proposed to reduce the total movement distance of sensors. For NCON, an efficient solution based on the Steiner minimum tree with constrained edge length is proposed. The combination of the solutions to TCOV and NCON, as demonstrated by extensive simulation experiments, offers a promising solution to the original MSD problem that balances the load of different sensors and prolongs the network lifetime consequently.


Agricultural water reservoirs (AWRs) are commonly used to guarantee water supply throughout the whole irrigation season in arid and semiarid areas. An important fraction of the total stored water is lost through evaporation, substantially decreasing overall irrigation efficiency. In this study, the effects of suspended shade cloth covers (SSCCs) on reducing evaporation and on the quality of the stored water have been experimentally assessed. To this aim, an AWR located in south-eastern Spain was monitored during two consecutive years. During the first year, the AWR remained uncovered, while during the second year it was covered with a black polyethylene SSCC. The evaporation rate, the water temperature profile and the driving meteorological variables determining evaporation were measured to assess the technical viability of the cover. Evaporation measurements for covered conditions were compared with estimations obtained from an openwater evaporation model which was validated during the first year of experimentation. A reduction close to 85% in the evaporation rate was found. To assess the effects on water quality, water samples and measurements with a multiparametric instrument were monthly collected during the two-year experimental period. Electrical conductivity, chlorophyll concentration and turbidity were measured using this equipment. Results indicate that the reduction in solar radiation (1% transmission through the cover) dramatically reduced the photosynthetic activity; hence algal bloom was highly limited. Finally, the main benefits and costs associated with the cover installation were identified in order to analyse economic viability under different scenarios representative of the current irrigated farming situation in south-eastern Spain. Additional key words: algae concentration; economic viability; electrical conductivity; evaporation; polyethylene meshes; water saving.


The rate of racemization of N(alpha)-phthalimidoglutarimide (thalidomide) was determined as its half life to be 566 min at pH 7.4/37 degrees C. This fast racemization of thalidomide resulted in no apparent difference between (S)- and (R)-forms of the compound on enhancing activity of phorbol ester-induced tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha production by human leukemia HL-60 cells. Optically pure forms of structurally related analog of thalidomide, (S)- and (R)-alpha-methyl-N(alpha)-phthalimidoglutarimides (methylthalidomides), which do not racemize under the physiological condition, were prepared. Only (S)-form of methylthalidomide, but not its (R)-form, elicited TNF-alpha production-enhancing effect, suggesting that the (S)-isomer of thalidomide would be the active form in terms of thalidomidal biological response modifying effects.


The international community, led by the United Nations, created Kosovo's new post-war institutions and continues to influence them, even after Kosovo declared independence in 2008. One of the very first priorities of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) was to establish the rule of law and to develop institutions and legal frameworks for a normally functioning economy. However, after almost two decades of internationally led institution-building, Kosovo is still, measured by European standards, a poor country with weak institutions. This paper shows that the creation of institutions does not follow a rational decision-making model, even when, like in Kosovo, institutions are created under direct international involvement and with the intention to develop the rule of law and facilitate economic development. The garbage can model approach to governance and decision-making provides a better explanation of the formation of governance institutions and why institutions, despite perhaps the best intentions, do not produce the desired results; failing to solve the underlying policy problems. The case studies on the privatisation of socially owned property and the development of contract law show that, in the case ofKosovo, adopting the best international and European standards almost always meant adopting a decontextualised solution promoted by an international actor. It did not really matter if that solution indeed solved the problem. In fact, in most cases the problem remained, with new problems being created becauseof the inadequacy of the imported ready-made solution. The conclusion is that sometimes less international assistance is more. In the absence of so much international financial and technical assistance, Kosovar leadership would have been required to assume more ownership of the policy-making for solving theirproblems. Less international assistance would also have meant less competition between international actors and less pressure to adopt ready-made decontextualised solutions.


Arsenic contamination of groundwater remains a serious health concern in many areas of the world. Developing countries such as Bangladesh and Nepal are particularly affected because access to high quality water infrastructure is low. Since the 1970s, most water in these countries is sourced from shallow tube wells installed to reduce the spread of diseases associated with poor water hygiene. In this goal they were successful, however by the mid 1990s it became apparent that many of these wells were contaminated by arsenic and that these countries' rural poor were being slowly poisoned. No simple, cheap, and reliable test for arsenic exists, and efforts to mitigate arsenic contamination have been severely limited by this over the past two decades. Government backed well-testing efforts using commercially available field kits have many issues with reliability, safety, rigour, and transparency, and have lost their urgency over the past decade, while the expensive field test kits remain out of the reach of most ordinary people in these areas. Synthetic Biology offers the technology to develop a new class of biosensor by exploiting bacteria's natural ability to sense and respond to levels of arsenic considerably lower than commercially available kits which are based on analytical chemistry. In order to reach this goal, we must first develop our understanding of the natural response to arsenic in our chosen host, B. subtilis. Although we have a reasonably good qualitative understanding of the operon responsible for arsenic sensing, very little quantitative analysis has been carried out, and a robust system for ratiometric characterisation has not been established in the bacteria. In this work, a robust platform for rapid ratiometric characterisation is established in B. subtilis. A rigorous mathematical model of the ars operon is developed and analysed before being verified experimentally. This new knowledge is then used to explore synthetic permutations to the natural system aimed at improving the sensor properties of the system. Finally, a biological architecture for an easily tunable biosensor with good characteristics is recommended.


A lattice model of protein conformation and dynamics is used to explore the requirements for the de novo folding from an arbitrary random coil state of idealized models of four and six‐member β‐barrels. A number of possible conjectures for the factors giving rise to the structural uniqueness of globular proteins are examined. These include the relative role of generic hydrophilic/ hydrophobic amino acid patterns, the relative importance of the specific identity of the hydrophobic amino acids that form the core of the protein and the possible role played by polar groups in destabilizing alternative, misfolded conformations. These studies may also provide some insights into the relative importance of short range interactions, cooperative hydrogen bonding and tertiary interactions in determining the uniqueness of the native state, as well as the cooperativity of the folding process. Thus, these simulations may provide guidelines for the early stages of the protein design process. Possible applications to the...


Existing battery technologies have become a major obstacle to advances in the performance of portable energy-intensive devices primarily due to a limited lifetime between charge cycles.1,2 Fuel-cell-based energy sources are a viable alternative due to the high energy density of liquid fuels and the potential for high efficiency power generation. The focus of recent work has been the development of two types of fuel cells for portable applications, hydrogen-based fuel cells with external fuel reformation, i.e., conversion to hydrogen, and direct-methanol fuel cells that oxidize methanol directly at the cell anode.1,3 Regardless of whether internal or external fuel reformation is used, power-efficient atomization of liquid fuels ranging from methanol to higher hydrocarbons and diesel to kerosene and logistic fuels, e.g., JP-8, is an essential processing step for conversion of a fuel from liquid to gas phase. We present the experimental characterization and theoretical modeling of the fluid mechanics underlying the operation of a micromachined ultrasonic atomizer. This droplet generator utilizes fluid cavity resonances in the 0.5 to 3 MHz range along with acoustic wave focusing for low power atomization of liquids for fuel processing. The device comprises a fuel reservoir located between a bulk ceramic piezoelectric transducer for ultrasound generation and a silicon micromachined array of liquid horn structures as the ejection nozzles. The array size can be scaled to meet flow rate requirements for any application because a single piezoelectric actuator drives ejection from multiple nozzles. The atomizer is particularly well-matched to fuel processing applications because it is capable of highly controlled atomization of a variety of liquid fuels at low flow rates. This low-flow-rate requirement intrinsic to small-scale, portable power applications is especially challenging since one cannot rely on the conventional jet-instability-based atomization approach. Further, the planar configuration of the nozzle array is suited to integration with the planar design of fuel cells. Experimentally-validated finite element analysis (FEA) simulations of the acoustic response of the device are used to estimate the fraction of the electrical input power to the piezoelectric transducer that is imparted to the ejected fluid. Results of this efficiency analysis indicate that it is not optimal to design the ejector such that a cavity resonance (corresponding to acoustic wave focusing at the tips of the pyramidally-shaped nozzles and thus fluid ejection) coincides with the longitudinal resonance of the piezoelectric transducer. It also appears that the efficiency of the device increases with decreasing frequency. Atomization of methanol and kerosene from 5 to 25 μm diameter orifices is demonstrated at multiple frequencies between 0.5 and 3 MHz. In addition, high-resolution visualization of the ejection process is performed to investigate whether or not the proposed atomizer is capable of operating in either the discrete-droplet or continuous-jetting mode (see Figure 1). The results of the visualization experiments provide a basic understanding of the physics governing the ejection process and allow for the establishment of simple scaling laws that prescribe the mode of ejection; however, it is likely that the phenomena that dictate the mode of ejection (i.e., discretedroplet vs. continuous-jet) do not occur within the field of view of the camera. Further, the most important features that determine the initial interface evolution occur within the nozzle orifice itself. A detailed computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis of the interface evolution during droplet/jet ejection yields additional insight into the physics of the ejection process and provides further validation of the scaling laws. Figure 2 provides examples of simulation of both discrete-droplet and continuous-jet mode ejection.Copyright © 2006 by ASME


This paper reports on the performance of directmethanol fuel cells (DMFCs) with the blend membranes of sulfonated polyether ether ketone (SPEEK)/ polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) as the electrolyte. The characteristic properties of the SPEEK/PVDF polymer membranes were investigated using thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA), scanning electronmicroscopy (SEM), and the AC impedance method. The blend shows good thermal and mechanical properties and appreciable ionic conductivity. Though the ionic conductivity decreased with increasing content of PVDF, there is an improvement in themechanical properties with the introduction of PVDF.As a result, the SPEEK/PVDF blends appear to be a good candidate as electrolytes for applications in DMFC. The performances of the membraneelectrode assembly (MEA) in DMFC, using the blend membranes of various percentages of PVDF (2-10%) were evaluated by single cell test and the maximumcurrent density of 350 mA/cm2 is observed around 0.25 V.


Users are used to authenticating themselves to websites, but not for websites to authenticate to them. One readily available mechanism that may help users make safer online decisions lies in website certificates that contain website identity information. Fraudulent websites are now short-lived and present valid certificates without any identity information. Our goal was to create and test the effectiveness of simpler certificate interfaces, made to help users differentiate between identity-verified websites and those without such verification, and thus, potentially fraudulent. We conducted a study with a certificate interface prototype with simple identity notification types. Our findings suggest that presenting identity information to users can help them differentiate between real and potentially fraudulent websites. Some users were suspicious of the notifications and incorrectly felt that they could make decisions based on website appearance, so building user background knowledge is essential.


A prominent two-step rise in atmospheric CO2 marked the end of the last glacial. The steps coincided with climatic intervals Heinrich Stadial 1 (HS1) and the Younger Dryas (YD). Records of 231Pa/230Th on sediment cores bathed by NADW, revealed a rapid reduction of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), during these intervals. It was argued that a weakened AMOC would have significantly reduced the efficiency of the biological pump and thus might have contributed to the rise in atmospheric CO2. Despite playing an important role, this process fails to account for the enigmatic drop in atmospheric Δ14C and δ13C during HS1 that marks the first step of the CO2-rise. Increasing CO2-concentrations with a simultaneous drop in their Δ14C, call for the ventilation of an old and 14C-depleted carbon reservoir. In this respect, several studies point to the presence of very old, 14C-depleted deep-waters in the glacial Southern Ocean, which rejuvenated during the last deglaciation. However, the accumulation of 14C-depleted, carbon-rich waters in the deep Southern Ocean requires circulation patterns that significantly differ from todays.
Here we present a combined set of 231Pa/230Th-, Rare Earth Element- and XRF-proxy records to understand the evolution of the South Pacific Overturning Circulation (SPOC) over the last 35,000 years. Our reconstructions are based on a transect of five sediment cores from the Southwest Pacific, covering the AAIW as well as the UCDW and LCDW. Our data show that throughout the last glacial the SPOC was significantly weakened. This reduction favored the observed accumulation of 14C-depleted CO2 in Circumpolar Deep Waters (CDW). Parallel to the HS1 increase of atmospheric CO2, the deep circulation picked up its pace and recovered toward the Holocene. This trend is in remarkable agreement with water mass radiocarbon reconstructions from the very same area, as well as with atmospherical changes in CO2, Δ14C and δ13C. Hence, we are confident that the Southern Ocean – represented here by the South Pacific – played the dominant role in the first rise in atmospheric CO2. In addition the observed deglacial SPOC strengthening may have supported the transport of warm CDW onto the shelf areas since the timing of retreating West Antarctic ice sheets is in good agreement with recent reconstructions.


CXCL12 and CXCL14 are evolutionarily conserved members of the CXC-type chemokine family. CXCL12 binds specifically to the G-protein-coupled receptor CXCR4 to induce the migration of primordial germ cells, hematopoietic stem cells, and inflammation-associated immune cells. In addition, CXCL12-CXCR4 signaling is often enhanced in malignant tumor cells and facilitates increased proliferation as well as metastasis. Although macrophage migration inhibitory factor and extracellular ubiquitin interact with CXCR4 as agonistic factors, CXCL12 was believed to be the sole chemokine ligand for CXCR4. However, a very recent report revealed that CXCL14 binds to CXCR4 with high affinity and efficiently inhibits CXCL12-mediated chemotaxis of hematopoietic progenitor and leukemia-derived cells. CXCL14 does not directly cross-compete with CXCL12 for the CXCR4 binding but instead inactivates CXCR4 via receptor internalization. Because both CXCL12 and CXCL14 are expressed during embryogenesis and brain development in mice, these two chemokines could function in an interactive fashion. We propose that the CXCL14 gene has been conserved from fish to man due to its role in fine-tuning the strength of CXCL12-mediated signal transduction. In addition to its biological implications, the above finding will be important for designing anti-cancer compounds targeting the CXCL12-CXCR4 signaling axis. In fact, a stabilized dimeric peptide containing the C-terminal 51–77 amino acid residues of CXCL14 has been shown to have stronger CXCL12 antagonistic activity than full-length CXCL14.


Regional integration through trade is recognized as one way to foster economic growth and poverty reduction. This paper uses the gravity model and 11-year panel data (1996-2006) on Southern African Development Community (SADC) member countries to study Zambia's regional agricultural trade flows and the impact of the SADC Trade Protocol (SADC-TP). Zambia's volume of trade is significantly related to most of the standard gravity variables. The results indicate that Zambia has been largely trading below potential, especially with respect to exports. There have been improvements in Zambia's trade flows during the SADC-TP period but only with a few countries. Further improvements will require re-examining protocol implementation and individual countries' production and marketing costs.


Clustering consumer data reveals important information to help refine products for specific market segments. There are compelling reasons to use incomplete block designs to collect consumer data; however, this presents the challenge of dealing with missing data. The purpose of this workshop is to investigate the effect of different imputation techniques on the results of cluster analysis of balancedincomplete-block (BIB) data. BIB designs and possible ways to incorporate information from sensory data into the design (cf. Browne et al., 2013) will be reviewed. Then, commonly used imputation and clustering approaches will be discussed. After this background material has been covered, expectationmaximization (EM) algorithm-based imputation will be presented. The remainder of the workshop will be interactive and hands on. Participants will be given two data sets (provided by Compusense Inc.) resulting from sensory informed BIB designs. Using R software, which will also be provided, participants will be invited to use EM algorithm-based imputation and compare the results to other approaches. Reference:


The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg are well-known cases of consensus politics. Traditionally, decision-making in the Low Countries has been characterized by broad involvement, power sharing and making compromises. These countries were also founding member states of the European Union (EU) and its predecessors. However, the relationship between European integration and the tradition of domestic consensus politics remains unclear. In order to explore this relationship this paper presents the conceptual framework and a short summary of the recently published book European Integration and Consensus Politics in the Low Countries (edited by Hans Vollaard, Jan Beyers and Patrick Dumont; Routledge). The authors discuss how consensus politics would shape the impact of European integration. They also analyse whether European integration may undermine the fundamental characteristics of consensus politics in the Low Countries. Drawing on consociationalism and Europeanization research, they provide a comprehensive overview of Europeanization in the three Low Countries as well as a better understanding of the varieties of consensus politics across and within these countries. In doing this they refer to a wide range of in-depth studies on a variety of political actors such as governments, parliaments, political parties, courts, ministries and interest groups as well as key policy issues such as the ratification of EU treaties and migration policy. Their most important observation is that European integration has changed the substance of consensus politics in some policy-areas, but barely the domestic political practice itself.


Trusted computing allows attesting remote system's trustworthiness based on the software stack whose integrity has been measured. However, attacker can corrupt system as well as measurement operation. As a result, nearly all integrity measurement mechanism suffers from the fact that what is measured may not be same as what is executed. To solve this problem, a novel integrity measurement called dynamic instruction trace measurement (DiT) is proposed. For DiT, processor's instruction cache is modified to stores back instructions to memory. Consequently, it is designed as a assistance to existing integrity measurement by including dynamic instructions trace. We have simulated DiT in a full-fledged system emulator with level-1 cache modified. It can successfully update records at the moment the attestation is required. Overhead in terms of circuit area, power consumption, and access time, is less than 3% for most criterions. And system only introduces less than 2% performance overhead in average.


We describe in this paper a new method for adaptive model-based control of non-linear dynamic plants using Neural Networks, Fuzzy Logic and Fractal Theory. The new neuro-fuzzy-fractal method combines Soft Computing (SC) techniques with the concept of the fractal dimension for the domain of Non-Linear Dynamic Plant Control. The new method for adaptive model-based control has been implemented as a computer program to show that our neuro-fuzzy-fractal approach is a good alternative for controlling non-linear dynamic plants. We illustrate in this paper our new methodology with the case of controlling biochemical reactors in the food industry. For this case, we use mathematical models for the simulation of bacteria growth for several types of food. The goal of constructing these models is to capture the dynamics of bactena population in food, so as to have a way of controlling this dynamics for industrial purposes.


Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are persistent organic compounds that are ubiquitously found in the environment. Their use and manufacture were restricted or banned in many countries in the 1970–1980s, however, they still persist in the antroposphere, the environment and in biota worldwide today. Conventions like the Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution encourage or bind the member parties to annually submit emission inventories of regulated air pollutants. Unfortunately, several member states have not yet reported PCB emissions. The identification and quantification of stocks and emissions sources is, however, an important precondition to handle and remove the remaining reservoirs of PCBs and, thus, to be able to reduce emissions and subsequently environmental exposure. Here, we estimate past, present, and future emissions of PCBs to air in Switzerland and provide emission factors for all relevant emission categories. Switzerland hereby represents a typical developed industrial country, and most of the assumptions and parameters presented here can be used to calculate PCB emission also for other countries. PCB emissions to air are calculated using a dynamic mass flow and emissions model for Switzerland, which is run for the years 1930–2100. The results point out the importance of the use of PCBs in open applications, which have largely been previously overlooked. Additionally, we show that PCBs will persist in applications during the coming decades with ongoing emissions. Especially the use of PCBs in open applications will cause Swiss emissions to remain above 100 kg PCB per year, even after the year 2030. Our developed model is available in Excel/VBA and can be downloaded with this article.


During the last decade there has been a rapid upturn in interest in reactive distillation. The chemical process industry recognizes the favorable economics of carrying out reaction simultaneously with distillation for certain classes of reacting systems, and many new processes have been built based on this technology. Interest is also increasing by academics and software vendors. Systematic design methods for reactive distillation systems have only recently begun to emerge. In this report we survey the available design techniques and point out the contributions made by our group at the University of Massachusetts.


The factors determining levels of local cultural budgets have been relatively well studied internationally, particularly with regards to political influences on expenditures. The Korean literature is not as ample in this area, however, so this study set out to begin to rectify this omission. Local government autonomy, with popular political demands placed on the budget suggesting more opportunities to look to international explanations and how they can account for the dynamics of the Korean situation. Incremmentalism and political budget cycles are considered as potential explanations, as are administrative and socioeconomic factors. Data from all 69 metropolitan city district governments from a period of five years (covering a full political budget cycle) from 2002-2006 were gathered and analyzed using a random effects GLS regression model. All of the incrementalism variables of old rate of culture spending and rate of budget change were positive and significant, indicating support for incrementalism as an explanation for the cultural budget. The PBC variables for the years before and after elections were significant and negative, though the actual election year was not significant. The PBC variable for left-wing mayor was significant and positive, indicating an unexpected liberal political dimension to cultural spending. The administrative and socioeconomic variables were mostly not significant, offering support for only the factors of local tax burden (positive), employment (positive), and income tax payments (negative). The paper concludes with suggestions for extending research into the area and for working more aggressively to adapt insights from international literature to the Korean case.


Hydroelectric power is playing a new and often expanded role in the world's major power grids, offering low carbon generating capacity in industrializing, dam-building economies while providing reserve and flexibility to co-manage fledgling wind and solar resources in high income countries. Driven by river flows, conventional hydropower is exposed to the vagaries of weather and climate, motivating drought and climate change hydropower impact studies at large spatial scales. Here we review methods of climate-driven hydropower simulation at large spatial scales, specifically multi-basin regions to global. We identify four types of approach based on complexity of tools and richness of data applied to the problem. Since the earliest attempts to model climate-driven hydropower at continental scale almost two decades ago, the field has transitioned from one of scientific curiosity to practical application, with studies increasingly motivated by the need to inform power grid expansion planning and operation. As the hydrological and water management models used in large-scale hydropower studies become more sophisticated, new opportunities will emerge to study the impacts of changing hydropower on power system reliability and performance at large power grid scale. To grasp these opportunities, the water resources community must continue to enhance data and models for representing river flows and anthropogenic water use and management at subcontinental to global scales.


Heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (HeFH) is characterized by a prevalence of 1/200 (higher than 1/500 as previously estimated): based on this updated prevalence, in Italy there are about 250-300 000 subjects with HeFH. Patients with HeFH are significantly underdiagnosed (in Italy only 4-5% of total estimated HeFH are properly diagnosed), undertreated (only 1 in 5 to 10 HeFH at target for LDL-cholesterol), and characterized by a high or very high cardiovascular risk. There are simple criteria for the diagnosis of familial hypercholesterolemia such as those issued by the Dutch Lipid Clinic Network (DLCN), easy to implement both in general practice as well as by the specialists. Genetic diagnosis is strongly suggested to support the diagnosis of familial hypercholesterolemia. Lipid-lowering therapy with high dose of highly effective statins, often associated with ezetimibe, should be initiated immediately at diagnosis in adults and at age 8-10 years in childhood. Evolocumab and alirocumab are monoclonal antibodies against PCSK9. They are a highly innovative lipid-lowering approach, characterized by a good safety profile and a remarkable LDL-cholesterol lowering effect when associated with the maximally tolerated dose of statins plus ezetimibe. Studies with alirocumab and evolocumab in HeFH patients show a further LDL-cholesterol decrease by 50-60% vs intensive lipid-lowering therapy with statins ± ezetimibe, with 70-80% of HeFH patients achieving their LDL-cholesterol targets.


Copyright © 2014 by Siemens Energy, Inc. In this publication an overview of the current state of wetness modeling at the Institute of Thermal Turbomachinery and Machinery Laboratory (ITSM) is given. For the modeling an Euler-Euler method implemented in the commercial flow solver ANSYS CFX is used. This method is able to take into account the non-equilibrium state of the steam and models the interactions between the gaseous and liquid phases. This paper is the first part of a two-part publication and deals with the numerical validation of wet steam models by means of condensing nozzle and cascade flows. A number of issues with regard to the quality of the CFD code and the applied condensation models are addressed comparing the results to measurements. It can be concluded, that a calibration of the models is necessary to achieve a satisfying agreement with the experimental results. Moreover, the modeling of the low pressure model steam turbine operated at the ITSM is described focusing on the asymmetric flow field in the last stage caused by the axialradial diffuser. Different simplified axisymmetric diffuser models are investigated in steady state simulations and the results and the arising issues for part-load, design-load and over-load conditions are discussed. Thereafter, a comparison between the equilibrium and non-equilibrium steam modeling approaches is performed and the advantage of the non-equilibrium model is highlighted. The second part of the publication focuses on experimental investigations and compares the numerical results to wetness measurement data, see Schatz et al. [1]. For this purpose, also different load conditions are considered.


The issue of an ethical approach to pleasure does not imply a religious or moral order, but a constant re-evaluation of how each image or representation of any contemporary culture (Indigenous, musical, professional, digital, etc.) impacts on social justice, equity, tolerance and freedom. Two attempts of anthropological restitution developed with Aboriginal peoples for a mixed audience are presented here. The first is a CD-ROM (Dream Trackers: Yapa Art and Knowledge of the Australian Desert), focused on one Central Australian community (Lajamanu in the Northern Territory), while the second is an interactive DVD (Quest in Aboriginal Land) based on films by Indigenous filmmaker Wayne Barker, juxtaposing four regions of Australia. Both projects aim to explore and enhance the cultural foundations of the reticular way in which many Indigenous people in Australia map their knowledge and experience of the world in a geographical virtual web of narratives, images and performances. The relevance of games for anthropological insights is also discussed in the paper. Nonlinear or reticular thinking mostly stresses the fact that there is no centrality to the whole but a multipolar view from each recomposed network within each singularity, a person, a place (a Dreaming in the case of Aboriginal cultures), allowing the emergence of meanings and performances, encounters, creations as new original autonomous flows. Reticular or network thinking, I argue, is a very ancient Indigenous practice but it gains today a striking actuality thanks to the fact that our so called scientific perception of cognition, virtuality and social performance has changed through the use of new technologies.


Reports of female song, once considered a rarity, have recently increased across a variety of avian taxa. Females of many species can be induced to produce male-like song with exogenous testosterone, but observations of female song in free-living birds remain limited by incomplete sampling of females. Here, we report three independent observations of female dark-eyed juncos (Junco hyemalis) producing male-like song early in the breeding season (i.e. post-territory establishment, pre-nesting) in a recently established non-migratory, urban population. To elicit song, we presented 17 free-living junco pairs with a live, caged female conspecific. Three unique females responded to our trials by diving at the intruding female, chasing their (male) mate, fanning their tail feathers, and singing a trilled song similar in structure to male long-range (broadcast) song. We compared male and female songs quantitatively and found that the two sexes were statistically similar in many spectral and temporal characteristics, but female songs had significantly lower minimum and peak frequencies than males. This result is particularly surprising, as males in this urban population are known to sing at a significantly higher minimum frequency than males in a nearby montane population. Both the seasonal and social context in which these songs were observed suggest a potential function for female song in mate guarding and polygyny prevention, but more data are needed to test this hypothesis. Whether female song is common in all dark-eyed juncos during the early breeding season or if it is restricted to this particular urban and non-migratory population remains an important question for future research.

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Let a0, a- and a+ be the preservation, annihilation, and creation operators of a probability measure μ on ℝd, respectively. The operators a0 and [a-, a+] are proven to uniquely determine the moments of μ. We discuss the question: "What conditions must two families of operators satisfy, in order to ensure the existence of a probability measure, having finite moments of any order, so that, its associated preservation operators and commutators between the annihilation and creation operators are the given families of operators?" For the case d = 1, a satisfactory answer to this question is obtained as a simple condition in terms of the Szego–Jacobi parameters. For the multidimensional case, we give some necessary conditions for the answer to this question. We also give a table with the associated preservation and commutator between the annihilation and creation operators, for some of the classic probability measures on ℝ.


A circular plate vibrating on resonance and rotating with a uniform angular speed is considered. In a moving frame (rotating with the plate), the plate motion can be expressed as the superposition of two propagating circular waves, traveling in opposite angular directions and having the same angular wave number and angular frequency. In a fixed frame (relative to the surrounding medium), the plate motion is still seen as two propagating circular waves, having the same angular wave number as in the moving frame. However they have two different angular frequencies, depending on the rotating speed. The modal radiation of a rotating plate can then be expressed in terms of radiation from propagating circular waves that allow a better understanding of the physical phenomena induced by the rotation. Radiation from propagating circular wave is computed using an integral formulation: The acoustical velocity is imposed on the plate area. The jump of pressure across the plate area is computed using a discretization ...


I would like to echo Dr. Massengale's comments in welcoming you to Nebraska. We are pleased to have you here. Nebraska is a major agricultural state. Ninety-seven percent of the land is privately owned and most of i t is
in agricultural production of one type or another. Nebraska ranks fifth in total receipt sales of Ag products. Nebraska ranks second in the nation in numbers of cattle on feed, fourth in cash receipts from all livestock marketing, first in production of great northern beans, …


A built environment designed to be appropriate for palliative care can make a profound difference for people with life-limiting illnesses. The built environment affects a patient's quality of life, the management of physical and psychological symptoms, and the quality of social interactions with loved ones and caregivers. This article is informed by the emerging trends in the research and practice in the disciplines of architecture, design, medicine, and nursing. The article is intended to provide a definition of palliative design and invite discussion of its potential impact on patients, families, and caregivers. Our goal is to initiate conversation about palliative design, foster sharing of experiences and feedback among building professionals, and discuss future paths for formal adoption into practice.


Preface List of contributors Glossary Chapter 1 - An introduction to cavity ring-down spectroscopy 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Direct absorption spectroscopy 1.3 Basic cavity ring down spectroscopy setup 1.4 A more refined picture 1.5 Fitting of cavity ring down transients 1.6 A few examples 1.7 Going beyond the standard pulsed CRDS experiment 1.8 Summary 1.9 References Chapter 2 - Cavity enhanced techniques using continuous wave lasers 2.1 Introduction 2.1 Properties of optical cavities and cw lasers relevant to cavity enhanced spectroscopy 2.3 Experimental methods for cw laser cavity enhanced spectroscopy 2.4 Spectroscopy with resonant cavities 2.5 Summary Chapter 3 - Broadband cavity ring-down spectroscopy 3.1 Introduction. 3.2 The time and wavelength evolution of a single ringdown event. 3.3 Two dimensional techniques: resolving broadband cavity output in time and wavelength. 3.4 One dimensional techniques: time or wavelength. 3.5 How to extract quantitative information from broadband spectra. 3.6 Optimising the sensitivity of a broadband measurement. 3.7 Applications of broadband cavity methods. 3.8 References . Chapter 4 - Cavity ring-down spectroscopy in analytical chemistry 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Condensed media CRDS 4.3 Evanescent-wave CRDS 4.4 Future trends and perspectives Chapter 5 - Cavity ring-down spectroscopy using waveguides 5.1. Introduction 5.2. The basic experiments 5.3. Optics and Instrumentation 5.4. Review of waveguide CRD literature 5.5. Conclusion and outlook 5.6. Acknowledgements Chapter 6 - Cavity ring down spectroscopy of molecular transients of astrophysical interest 6.1. Introduction 6.2. Experimental 6.3. Astronomical considerations 6.4. Results 6.5. Outlook Acknowledgements References Chapter 7 - Applications of cavity ring-down spectroscopy in atmospheric chemistry 7.1. Brief overview 7.2. Measurement of trace atmospheric species by CRDS 7.3. Laboratory based studies of atmospheric interest 7.4. Optical properties of atmospheric aerosol particles 7.5. Future developments Chapter 8 - Cavity ring-down spectroscopy for medical applications 8.1. Introduction 8.2. Trace gases in medicine and biology 8.3. Instrumentation for laser analytics of breath and other biological gas samples 8.4. Applications to life sciences 8.5. Conclusion and Perspectives 8.6. References Chapter 9: Studies into the growth mechanism of a-Si:H using in situ cavity ring-down techniques 9.1. Introduction 9.2. Gas phase CRDS on SiH x radicals 9.3. Thin film CRDS on dangling bonds in a-Si:H films (ex situ) 9.4. Evanescent wave CRDS on dangling bonds during a-Si:H film growth Chapter 10 - Cavity ring down spectroscopy for combustion studies 10.1. Introduction 10.2. General description of cavity ring down spectroscopy in flames 10.3. Experimental set-up 10.4. Quantitative concentration measurements in flames 10.5. Concentration profile determination 10.6. Specific difficulties in combustion studies 10.7. Case of particles: soot volume fraction determination 10.8. Conclusion and prospective References Appendix A Literature


We have conducted a prospective study of 441 patients, to investigate the utility of a new tumor marker CA 19-9 for the diagnosis and monitoring of patients with cancer of the gastrointestinal tract (93 patients with colorectal carcinoma, 57 with carcinoma of the stomach, 10 with esophageal carcinoma, 45 with malignancies outside the gastrointestinal tract, and 236 with benign general surgical disease). Results were compared to those obtained for carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) in the diagnosis of carcinoma of the stomach and colon/rectum. CEA is more sensitive than CA 19-9 in all stages of carcinoma of the stomach and colon/rectum. During treatments of gastrointestinal carcinomas, CEA and CA 19-9 were determined at the same time in 66 and 165 patients with surgically treated carcinoma of the stomach and colorectal carcinoma, respectively. It was noted that CEA is more sensitive than CA 19-9 in detecting recurrence. However, CA 19-9 is more specific. The best results were obtained when both markers were used together.


Introduction. Applied epistemology allows information studies to benefit from developments in philosophy. In information studies, epistemic concepts are rarely considered in detail. This paper offers a review of several epistemic concepts, focusing on understanding, as a call for further work in applied epistemology in information studies. Method. A hermeneutic literature review was conducted on epistemic concepts in information studies and philosophy. Relevant research was retrieved and reviewed iteratively as the research area was refined. Analysis. A conceptual analysis was conducted to determine the nature and relationships of the concepts surveyed, with an eye toward synthesizing conceptualizations of understanding and opening future research directions. Results. The epistemic aim of understanding is emerging as a key research frontier for information studies. Two modes of understanding (hermeneutic and epistemological) were brought into a common framework. Conclusions. Research on the concept of understanding in information studies will further naturalistic information research and provide coherence to several strands of philosophic thought.


Based on the experimental evidence that Na(+)-Ca(2+) exchange participates in the regulation of intracellular Ca(2+) concentration in pancreatic beta-cells, we construct a mathematical model for the cyclic spike-bursts and oscillations of intracellular Ca(2+) concentration. In our model, an increase in ATP concentration by the stimulation of glucose metabolism leads to the closure of ATP-sensitive K(+) channels (K(ATP) channels) and gradual depolarization to the threshold of voltage-gated Ca(2+) channels. Spikes are generated by the alternate activation of voltage-gated Ca(2+) and K(+) channels, causing Ca(2+) entry. The accumulated Ca(2+) ions are extruded by Na(+)-Ca(2+) exchange and Ca(2+) active transport. An increase in Na(+) influx through Na(+)-Ca(2+) exchangers results in a rise in intracellular Na(+) concentration and the activation of Na(+)-K(+) active transport. The consumption of ATP during the process of Ca(2+) extrusion leads to the opening of K(ATP) channels and repolarization. The present model could reproduce the main experimental features of the spike-burst activity and Ca(2+) oscillations following changes in the extracellular glucose concentration. As the rate of ATP production increases, the spike-burst pattern changes from bursts with long silent phases to continuous spiking. Changes in the pattern of electrical activity produced by the alteration of extracellular Na(+) and K(+) concentrations and the addition of ouabain could be reproduced in the present model.


Abstract Purpose: Perilunate (fracture) dislocations are rare injuries and diminished functional outcomes are reported. However, Patient Reported Outcomes (PROs) following these injuries are rarely described. The aim of this study was to investigate the long-term impact of perilunate (fracture) dislocations using a range of measures, including pain, function, and quality of life. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted from January 2016 until March 2016. Eleven patients who had suffered from perilunate (fracture) dislocations between August 1996 and January 2014 were matched on age and gender with 22 healthy controls. Functional outcome included range of motion and grip strength measurements. The Patient Reported Outcomes included: Patient Reported Wrist Evaluation, Disability of Arm, Shoulder and Hand questionnaire, Michigan Hand Questionnaire and the Short Form-36. Results: The 11 patients that were included (9 males) had a median age at injury of 38 years (IQR 33; 54) and median follow up of 97 months (IQR 84-193). Flexion/extension (mean difference −60°, 95% CI −76, −43, p < 0.001) and ulnar/radial deviation (mean difference −28°, 95% CI −38, −18, p < 0.001) were significantly diminished in patients following perilunate (fracture) dislocations. Grip strength was not affected. The patients experienced significantly more pain as assessed on all pain subscales. Physical functioning was significantly worse in the group with perilunate (fracture) dislocations as assessed on all function subscales, except the PRWE function score and the subscale physical functioning of the Short Form-36. Satisfaction as measured with the Michigan Hand Questionnaire satisfaction subscale (mean difference −36, 95% CI −57, −16, p = 0.002) was also reported poorer. No difference was found regarding work participation. Conclusions: A perilunate (fracture) dislocation has a significant impact on everyday life, as patients experience diminished range of motion, pain, diminished physical functioning, diminished satisfaction and report lower general health status than healthy controls. However, no consequences for work participation were found in this study. Level of evidence 3. Implications for rehabilitation Flexion/extension and ulnar/radial deviation remains limited following perilunate (fracture) dislocations. Grip strength is not diminished in patients with perilunate (fracture) dislocations. Pain, restrictions in physical functioning, diminished satisfaction and lower general health status are likely to be present following perilunate (fracture) dislocations. If conservative treatment including pain medication and rehabilitation strategies do not relief pain following perilunate (fracture) dislocations, surgical treatment options such as wrist denervation or arthrodesis should be considered.


Part 1. The Nature of Development and Development Studies 1.1 Development in a Global-Historical Context 1.2 What's in a Name? From Third World to Poor Countries 1.3 The Origins and Nature of Development Studies 1.4 The Impasse in Development Studies 1.5 Development and Economic Growth 1.6 Development and Social Welfare - Human Rights 1.7 Development as Freedom 1.8 Race and Development 1.9 Culture and Development 1.10 Ethics and Development 1.11 New Institutional Economics and Development 1.12 Measuring Development: from GDP to HDI 1.13 Poverty and Development: Definitions and Measures 1.14 The Millennium Development Goals 1.15 BRICs and Development Part 2. Theories and Strategies of Development 2.1. Theories, Strategies and Ideologies of Development 2.2. Smith, Ricardo and the World Marketplace 1776-2011 2.3. The Enlightenment and the Era of Modernity 2.4. Dualistic and Unilinear Perspectives on Development 2.5. Neoliberalism: Globalization's Neoconservative Enforcer of Austerity 2.6. Dependency Theories 2.7. New World Dependency Theory 2.8. World Systems Theory 2.9 Indigenous Knowledge and Development 2.10. Participatory Development 2.11 Post-Colonialism and Development 2.12 Postmodernism and Development 2.13 Post-development 2.14 Social Capital and Development Part 3. Globalisation, Employment and Development 3.1 Globalisation: an Overview 3.2 The 'new' International Division of Labour 3.3 Global Shift: Industrialization and Development 3.4 Globalisation and Localisation 3.5 Trade and Industrial Policy in Developing Countries 3.6 The Knowledge-based Economy and the Digital Divisions of Labour 3.7 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Development 3.8 The Informal Economy in Cities of the South 3.9 Child Labour 3.10 Pro-poor Globalisation 3.11 Migration and Transnationalism 3.12 Diaspora and Development Part 4 Rural Development 4.1 Rural Poverty 4.2 Rural Livelihoods 4.3 Food Security 4.4 Famines 4.5 Genetically Modified Crops and Development 4.6 Rural Co-operatives 4.7 Land Reform 4.8 Gender, Agriculture and Land Rights 4.9 The Sustainable Intensification of Agriculture Part 5. Urbanisation and Development 5.1 Urbanization in Low- and Middle-Income Nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America 5.2 Urban Bias 5.3 Global Cities and the Production of Uneven Development 5.4 Studies in Comparative Urbanism 5.5 Prosperity or Poverty? Wealth, Inequality and Deprivation in Urban Areas 5.6 Housing the Urban Poor 5.7 Urbanisation and Environment in Low and Middle-income Countries 5.8 Transport and Urban Development 5.9 Cities, Crime and Development Part 6. Environment and Development 6.1 Sustainable Development 6.2 International Regulation and the Environment 6.3 Climate Change and Development: An Overview 6.4 Changing Climate and African Development 6.5 Vulnerability & Disasters 6.6 Ecosystems Services for Development 6.7 Natural Resource Management: A Critical Appraisal 6.8 Water and Hydropolitics 6.9 Energy and Development 6.10 Tourism and Environment 6.11 Transport and Sustainability: Developmental Pathways Part 7. Gender and Development 7.1 Demographic Changes and Gender 7.2 Women and the State 7.3 Gender, Families and Households 7.4 Feminism and Feminist Issues in the South 7.5 Rethinking Gender and Empowerment 7.6 Gender and Globalisation 7.7 Migrant Women in the New Economy: Understanding the Gender-Migration-Care Nexus 7.8 Women and Political Representation Shirin M. Rai 7.9 Sexualities and Development 7.10 Hegemonic Masculinities 7.11 Indigenous Fertility Control Part 8. Health and Education 8.1 Nutritional Problems, Policies and Intervention Strategies in Developing Economies 8.2 Motherhood and Child Health 8.3 The Development Impact of HIV/AIDS 8.4 Ageing and Poverty 8.5 Health and Inequality 8.6 Disability 8.7 Social Protection in Development Context 8.8 Female Participation in Education 8.9 The Challenge of Skill Formation and Training 8.10 Development Education, Global Citizenship and International Volunteering Part 9. Political Economy of Violence and Insecurity 9.1 Gender and Age-Based Violence 9.2 Fragile States 9.3 Refugees 9.4 Humanitarian Aid 9.5 Rights and Social Justice 9.6 Global War on Terror, Development and Civil Society 9.7 Peace-building Partnerships and Human Security 9.8 Nationalism 9.9 Ethnic Conflict and the State 9.10 Religions and Development Part 10. Governance and Development 10.1 Foreign Aid in a Changing World 10.2 The Rising Powers as Development Donors and Partners 10.3 Aid Conditionality 10.4 Aid Effectiveness 10.5 Global Governance Issues and Current Crisis 10.6 Change Agents: A History of Hope in NGOs, Civil Society, and the 99% 10.7 Corruption and Development 10.8 Role of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) 10.9 Non-Governmental Public action Networks and Global Policy Processes 10.10 Multilateral Institutions and the Financing of Development 10.11 Challenges to the World Trade Organisation 10.12 Is there a Legal Right to Development?


When an agent A depends on an agent B to promote one of A's epistemic goals, this will often involve B's forming and sharing of true beliefs. However, as is well documented in research on cognitive irrationality, agents are disposed to form and share false-but-useful beliefs in a lot of circumstances. The dependence relation is thus at risk of becoming negative: A might adopt false beliefs from B and thus be unable to promote their epistemic goal. I propose that we can employ the notion of an epistemic conflict of interest [ECOI] to capture the kinds of problems that epistemically interdependent agents face. Much like familiar cases of conflict of interests—e.g., related to government officials—in ECOI an agent is subject to a normatively primary interest—roughly to form and share true beliefs—that stands in conflict with normatively secondary interests. I focus on secondary interests documented in the aforementioned research on cognitive irrationality. The resulting framework addresses an explanatory gap in the literature on social epistemic norms by making explicit why there's a need for these norms to regulate our epistemic lives. Lastly, I show how the ECOI-framework furthermore allows us to make sense of and amend norm regulation failures.


Deep neural network (DNN) has demonstrated its success in multiple domains. However, DNN models are inherently vulnerable to adversarial examples, which are generated by adding adversarial perturbations to benign inputs to fool the DNN model to misclassify. In this paper, we present a cross-layer strategic ensemble framework and a suite of robust defense algorithms, which are attack-independent, and capable of auto-repairing and auto-verifying the target model being attacked. Our strategic ensemble approach makes three original contributions. First, we employ input-transformation diversity to design the input-layer strategic transformation ensemble algorithms. Second, we utilize model-disagreement diversity to develop the output-layer strategic model ensemble algorithms. Finally, we create an input-output cross-layer strategic ensemble defense that strengthens the defensibility by combining diverse input transformation based model ensembles with diverse output verification model ensembles. Evaluated over 10 attacks on ImageNet dataset, we show that our strategic ensemble defense algorithms can achieve high defense success rates and are more robust with high attack prevention success rates and low benign false negative rates, compared to existing representative defenses.


The evaluation of the extreme hydrodynamic forces-induced dynamic response in bed is particularly important for coastal geotechnical engineers involved in the design of the foundations of marine structures at estuarine area. As the two main sorts of extreme hydrodynamic forces in Qiantang estuary, tidal bore and storm surge are considered in this work. This paper presents an analytical solution of the tidal bore induced estuary bed response. State-space method together with Laplace-Fourier transform techniques are used to solve the governing equations. The tidal bore-induced response of estuary bed can be calculated by using the matrix theory, boundary conditions and inverting integral transform. Compared with the special solution in preceding literatures, it's shown that the proposed method has the advantage of high calculation efficiency and accuracy.


SummaryThe simultaneous pharmacokinetics of alclofenac in the plasma and synovial fluid of 10 patients with rheumatoid arthritis were studied after a single 1 g. oral dose. A gas-liquid chromatographic method was used for assaying alclofenac in both plasma and synovial fluid. Alclofenac readily appears in the plasma and synovial fluid.


The idea of "think tanks" is one of the oldest in the policy sciences. While the topic has been studied for decades, however, recent work dealing with advocacy groups, policy and Behavioural Insight labs, and into the activities of think tanks themselves have led to discontent with the definitions used in the field, and especially with the way the term may obfuscate rather than clarify important distinctions between different kinds of knowledge-based policy influence organizations (KBPIO). In this paper, we examine the traditional and current definitions of think tanks utilized in the discipline and point out their weaknesses. We then develop a new framework to better capture the variation in such organizations which operate in many sectors.


During the summers of 1959 and 1960, field observations of the influence of some climatic and terrain features on permafrost were carried out at Norman Wells, N.W.T. Five sites, all underlain by the perennially frozen ground, were selected for investigation. One site was a Thornthwaite potential evapotranspiration site with a vegetation cover of Kentucky bluegrass growing on clayey silt. The four remaining sites included the various types of vegetation growing naturally in the Norman Wells region. The tree growth was predominantly spruce with some tamarack. Sphagnum and other mosses, lichen, and sedge comprised the ground cover. The peat layer varied in thickness from 7 in. to 2ft and the mineral soil was predominantly clayey silt. At each site, measurements were taken of evaporation (including potential evapotranspiration), net radiation at the ground surface, depth of thaw, and ground temperatures in the thawed layer and the permafrost. Although field conditions dictated the use of crude measuring devices, some quantitative information was obtained on the relative importance of these climatic and terrain features in the permafrost environment. Potential evapotranspiration was higher in the Kentucky bluegrass at the Thornthwaite site than in Sphagnum and in other mosses, in lichen, and in sedge at the other sites. Net radiation values appeared to be slightly higher for moss than for lichen. The depth of thaw under moss and lichen was less than in areas supporting other types of plant growth. Ground temperatures in the thawed layer and in the permafrost showed the same characteristics, being lower in the moss and lichen areas.


We describe a multipole method for calculating the modes of microstructured optical fibers. The method uses a multipole expansion centered on each hole to enforce boundary conditions accurately and matches expansions with different origins by use of addition theorems. We also validate the method and give representative results.


Unskilled labor is the abundant resource in many developing countries, especially at an early stage of their development. Yet, even as at given technologies labor markets have not cleared, neo-classical economists have rejected the notion of an institutional or bargaining wage not based on competitive full employment marginal productivity fundamentals. This paper puts to rest some objections to labor surplus theory based on "red herrings" and then addresses the substantive challenges from the micro-econometric branch of neo-classical economics. We contend that the finding of inelastic supply curves of labor is based on a cross-section static analysis of labor supply within agriculture while the labor surplus model deals with tracing the dynamic reallocation of labor from a traditional to a neo-classical organized sector in a dualistic economy. We present data for a number of labor surplus developing countries showing that institutional wages lag behind agricultural productivity increases as countries move towards a "turning point" when inter-sectoral balanced growth has eliminated unskilled labor and the economy has lost its dual characteristic.


To aid in the development of advanced ceramics, a materials design system was constructed. The system can be used to improve properties of ceramics by changing the composition and processing parameters. The system includes the following modules: the advanced ceramics database, the evaluation and optimization modules, the knowledge base, and the artificial neural network. Starting with the desired properties, a ceramics database will be sought. If suitable materials can be found, an evaluation module can be used to select the best one. If a suitable material is not found, the optimization module can be used to select a material with the desired property values as a reference material for materials design. The materials design system needs a large knowledge base. This knowledge base includes many relationships between composition, processing parameters, and properties. The traditional expert system or artificial neural network can be employed to acquire the knowledge base. Compared to traditional methods, the neural network is a more efficient tool for multidimensional, complex, and quantitative problems, especially problems with unknown rules. A combination of these two methods works best. Using the knowledge base obtained, users can predict the experimental results.


Nestlings of some brood parasitic birds evict hosts' eggs and young soon after hatching, thereby avoiding discrimination by hosts while monopolizing parental care. Eviction carries a cost, however, because lone parasitic nestlings attract a reduced provisioning rate. Here we describe a form of visual signaling used by the evicting Horsfield's hawk-cuckoo (Cuculus fugax) to obtain sufficient food. The chick displays a gape-colored patch on the wing to the host parents as they deliver food, simulating the gaping display of more than one nestling.


The commonly applied cryopreservation protocols routinely used in laboratories worldwide were developed for simple cell suspensions, and their application to complex systems, such as cell monolayers, tissues, or biosynthetic constructs, is not straightforward. In particular for monolayer cultures, cell detachment and membrane damage are often observed after cryopreservation. In this work, combined strategies for the cryopreservation of cells attached to Matrigel-coated well plate's surfaces were investigated based on cell entrapment in clinicalgrade, ultra-high viscosity alginate using two cell lines, neuroblastoma N2a and colon adenocarcinoma Caco-2, with distinct structural and functional characteristics. As the cryopreservation medium, serum-free CryoStor solution was compared with serum-supplemented culture medium, both containing 10% DMSO. Using culture medium, entrapment beneath an alginate layer was needed to improve cell recovery by minimizing membrane damage and cell detachment after thawing; nevertheless, up to 50% cell death still occurred within 24 h after thawing. The use of CryoStor solution represented a considerable improvement of the cryopreservation process for both cell lines, allowing the maintenance of high postthaw membrane integrity as well as full recovery of metabolic activity and differentiation capacity within 24 h postthawing; in this case, entrapment beneath an alginate layer did not confer further protection to cryopreserved Caco-2 cells, but was crucial for maintenance of attachment and integrity of N2a neuronal networks.


This workbook seeks to provide some background to the Global Meeting on the Future of Internet Governance (NETmundial) scheduled for April 23rd and 24th 2014 in São Paulo, Brazil. It is designed to help outline the internet policy issues that are at stake and will be discussed at NETmundial, as well as background on internet policy in Brazil. The workbook includes essays on the history of the NETmundial meeting and the Marco Civil process in Brazil; some background on the environment in Germany—with particular attention to the link between the meeting and the Snowden case; questions of legitimacy surrounding open processes for lawmaking; and comments on the material presented to the organizing committee by official and unofficial commenters. This workbook was produced as a part of the Internet Policy Observatory, a program at the Center for Global Communication Studies, the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. It was edited and curated by a steering committee including Ellery Roberts Biddle of Global Voices, Ronaldo Lemos of the Rio Institute for Technology and Society, and Monroe Price of the Annenberg School for Communication. They were assisted by Alexandra Esenler, Laura SchwartzHenderson, and Briar Smith.


Introduction: Elder neglect remains as unreported case that involved old women in Ampenan West Nusa Tenggara. Despite the paucity of evidence to report the significance, an earlier pilot study showed that elders who lived with their family in Ampenan were found dirty, skin dry, and malnourished. The purpose of this study was to explore the correlating factors to the unreported cases of neglect among these elders. Method: This study was a cross sectional conducted using analytic descriptive approach. Thirty-four extended families lived with female elders in the working area of Puskesmas Ampenan were purposively involved as participants to this study. Family's awareness of abuse was collected using a questionnaire developed based on Elder Abuse Instrument component checklist and the suspicion to neglect among the elders were collected using the 13-item checklist from Elder Abuse Instrument. The data were then analyzed using Spearman's rho (α ≤ 0,05). Result:  The results show that family's lack of knowledge has a strong correlation with elder neglect (p= 0,000 with r= 0,643). Discussion: The analysis to this finding suggests that not only were the families lack of knowledge, but they were also being burden by the poor economic situation that trigger the unnecessary neglect to their female elders. These results abridge the paucity of evidence to explain the correlating factors with the incidence of elder abuse in eastern Indonesia. Further research is necessary to explain the size and the impact of neglect toward the elders. It is suggested that local department of health, Puskesmas and health professionals to educate the community as the first step to improve the elders' quality of life and promote healthy ageing.


Analyses the current child support legislation in its broader historical and social context, synthesising both doctrinal and socio-legal approaches to legal research and scholarship. The book draws on the historical and legal literature on the Poor Law and the development of both the public and private law obligation of child maintenance. Modern child support law must also be considered in the context of both social and demographic changes and in the light of popular norms about child maintenance liabilities. The main part of the book is devoted to an analysis of the modern child support scheme, and the key issues are addressed: the distinction between applications in 'private' and 'benefit' cases and the extent to which the courts retain a role in child maintenance matters; the basis for, and the justification for, the exception from the obligation for parents with care on benefit to co-operate with the Child Support Agency where they fear 'undue harm or distress'; the assessment of income for the purposes of the formula and the evidential difficulties this entails; the tension between the formula, which ignores the parent with care's income, and the demands of distributive justice; the further conflict between the formula, under which liability is capped only for the very wealthy, and the traditional approach of private law, which is premised on children being entitled to maintenance rather than a share in family wealth; the treatment of special cases under the formula by way of 'variations' (formerly 'departures'); the nature of decision-making and the scope for appeals; and the efficacy of the provisions relating to collection and enforcement.


Alzheimer disease (AD) is associated with navigational impairments that limit functional independence. We have now examined the role of cognitive and perceptual mechanisms in the navigational impairment of AD to test the hypothesis that men and women with AD may focus on different navigational cues. We conducted navigational, neuropsychologic, and psychophysical testing in men and women from 3 groups: older normal controls, patients with mild cognitive impairment, and patients with AD. Men and women showed parallel declines in navigational capacities from the older normal control, to the mild cognitive impairment, to the AD groups with men and women making similar numbers of errors but different types of errors. There were small sex differences in neuropsychologic and psychophysical performance but large sex differences in how those measures related to navigational capacity: men showed strong links between visual motion processing and navigation. Women showed strong links between verbal capacities and navigation. The findings of these cross-sectional comparisons suggest that there may be sex differences in the progressive navigational decline of AD: men and women who are impaired to the same degree may suffer somewhat different patterns of decline with men relying more on visuospatial processing and women relying more on verbal mediation.


Political realists seek to provide an alternative to accounts of political legitimacy that are based on moral standards. In this endeavor, they face the challenge of how to interpret the maxim that power cannot be self-legitimating . In this paper we argue that work by Bernard Williams sheds light on the possible answers to this challenge. While Williams aligns himself with the realist tradition, his account of legitimacy contains an implicit critique of political realism. This is evident, we show, in his rejections of the views of Thomas Hobbes and Max Weber. Williams is not satisfied with Hobbes because he conflates legitimacy and political order, eliminating space for criticizing power. Weber's view, however, offers a non-moralist standard of legitimacy that has critical purchase. This critical purchase emerges from the demands made on rulers to uphold the values that underlie their legitimation, combined with the ethic of responsibility. The resulting grounds for criticism are thus consistent with the maxim that power cannot be self-legitimating – the very maxim that Williams puts at the heart of his realism. By showing that Williams's partial rejection of Hobbes and Weber cannot be sustained only on realist grounds, our analysis clarifies the limits of political realism.


Shell galaxies make a class of tidally distorted galaxies, characterised by wide concentric arc(s), extending out to large galactocentric distances with sharp outer edges. Recent observations of young massive star clusters in the prominent outer shell of NGC 474 suggest that such systems host extreme conditions of star formation. In this paper, we present a hydrodynamic simulation of a galaxy merger and its transformation into a shell galaxy. We analyse how the star formation activity evolves with time, location-wise within the system, and what are the physical conditions for star formation. During the interaction, an excess of dense gas appears, triggering a starburst, i.e. an enhanced star formation rate and a reduced depletion time. Star formation coincides with regions of high molecular gas fraction, such as the galactic nucleus, spiral arms, and occasionally the tidal debris during the early stages of the merger. Tidal interactions scatter stars into a stellar spheroid, while the gas cools down and reforms a disc. The morphological transformation after coalescence stabilises the gas and thus quenches star formation, without the need for feedback from an active galactic nucleus. This evolution shows similarities with a compaction scenario for compact quenched spheroids at high-redshift, yet without a long red nugget phase. Shells appear after coalescence, during the quenched phase, implying that they do not host the conditions necessary for in situ star formation. The results suggest that shell-forming mergers might be part of the process of turning blue late-type galaxies into red and dead early-types.


Sigma-1 receptor (S1R) is an intracellular, multi-functional, ligand operated protein that also acts as a chaperone. It is considered as a pluripotent drug target in several pathologies. The publication of agonist and antagonist bound receptor structures has paved the way for receptor-based in silico drug design. However, recent studies on this subject payed no attention to the structural differences of agonist and antagonist binding. In this work, we have developed a new ensemble docking-based virtual screening protocol utilizing both agonist and antagonist bound S1R structures. This protocol was used to screen our in-house compound library. The S1R binding affinities of the 40 highest ranked compounds were measured in competitive radioligand binding assays and the sigma-2 receptor (S2R) affinities of the best S1R binders were also determined. This way three novel high affinity S1R ligands were identified and one of them exhibited a notable S1R/S2R selectivity.


Using the linguistic dependency treebanks and digitized texts created by the Perseus Digital Library, we are creating social networks for a collection of Greek tragedies that allow users to visualize the interactions between characters in the plays. Because the number of characters who appear on stage in Greek tragedy is limited, most of these social network diagrams fall into a few basic types. The most interesting aspect of these networks are, therefore, the edges that connect the nodes within the graphs. The linguistic data used to label or even create these edges becomes the jumping off point for visualizing and exploring the language of Greek tragedy.


Many theories of memory propose some type of shortterm store limited in capacity to a small number of information chunks. However, although short-term verbal memory is generally considered to be a crucial component of language processing, the relevant information chunk level that may define capacity limits in ecologically-valid spoken language has never been investigated. The Intonation Unit (IU), an intermediate-level prosodic phrase, has been theorized to be a fundamental unit of spoken language, the focus of a speaker's mental processing. This suggests that IUs might play a role as the relevant unit representing "chunks" of spoken language. We report the results of an experiment investigating the role of IUs in short-term memory in a serial recall task. We found a significant non-linear effect of stimulus size in IUs, but not clauses. We conclude that Intonation Units are the primary linguistic unit used for chunking spoken language input in memory.


Abstract Denudational history is commonly reconstructed from basin sediments derived from the denuded source area, and less frequently from the source area itself. Northern Britain is an important source area for the surrounding sedimentary basins and this paper reviews the erosional history of Scotland from Devonian time to the present using evidence both from onshore geology and geomorphology and from patterns of sedimentation in surrounding basins. Cover rocks were extensive in Scotland during late Palaeozoic time but the persistence of sediment source areas within the upland areas of Scotland makes it unlikely that basement highs were ever completely buried, and depths of post-Devonian erosion of basement have been correspondingly modest (< 1–2 km). During Mesozoic time, Scotland experienced several major erosional cycles, beginning with uplift, reactivation of relief and stripping of cover rocks, followed by progressive reduction of relief through etchplanation and culminating in extensive marine transgressions in Late Triassic, Late Jurassic and Late Cretaceous time. Mid-Paleocene pulses of coarse sediment to the Moray Firth Basin coincided with major uplift. This uplift was associated with major differential tectonics within the Highlands, with warping and faulting along the margins of the Minch and the inner Moray Firth Basins. Tectonic activity was renewed on a lesser scale in late Oligocene time and continued into Late Neogene time. Differential weathering and erosion under the warm to temperature humid climates of Neogene time created the major elements of the preglacial relief, with formation of valleys, basins, scarps and inselbergs, features often closely adjusted to lithostructural controls and, in some cases, with precursors that can be traced back to Devonian time. The history that can be 'read' from the onshore region complements the source area history interpreted from sedimentary basins derived from these areas.


Analyzes the economics of alternative allocations of forested land for uses (dominant-use vs. multiple use) to ensure the survival of a viable population of a forest-dependent species, e.g. the orangutan. The alternatives are (1) setting aside a sufficient fully protected portion of the forest and allowing the rest to be used for intensive logging and (2) fully protecting none of the forested area but allowing a sufficient portion of it to be lightly (selectively) logged to ensure the survival of the population of the focal species with the remaining land (if any) being available for intensive use.


We present a marine Controlled Source Electromagnetic (mCSEM) 3D interpretation workflow based on anisotropic inversion applied to a dataset acquired in the Santos Basin offshore Brazil as part of a co-operation project between Petrobras and Schlumberger to evaluate the integration of deep reading Electromagnetic (EM) technologies into the full cycle of oil field exploration and development. The mCSEM dataset was acquired to demonstrate the improved detection and delineation of challenging EMtargets such as "smaller and deeper" hydrocarbon filled reservoir zones in complex background using 3D total field data. The project area hosting a proven reservoir was covered by a receiver grid and an orthogonal source lines grid extending beyond the receivers in the in line and cross line directions with all receivers active throughout the acquisition of both the orthogonal sets of source lines. We show that 3D inversion of the mCSEM total field data embedded in an advanced integrated workflow improves our ability to delineate hydrocarbon, their position and thickness resolution and increases our confidence about the resistivity at the reservoir(s) level. This increased resolution can provide in subsequent integrated interpretation workflows detailed information about reservoir volume distributions.


Throughout its history, this country has recognized the common law right against bodily intrusions. It is considered among the most cherished of rights. It seems beyond debate that a parallel right against government-imposed bodily intrusions should receive robust constitutional protection. Yet the Supreme Court's treatment of the right against government-imposed bodily intrusions is muddled and lacks an overarching theory. Far from recognizing the right as fundamental, the Court has effectively demoted the right from its deserved status through two major analytical missteps. First, the Court has created arbitrary doctrinal barriers between different manifestations of the same right rather than consistently treating it as a unitary, fundamental substantive due process right. Second, it has given insufficient weight to the nonphysical, or "psychological" harms of forced bodily intrusions, and has deferred excessively to the government's justifications for intruding. This Article is the first to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the scattered Supreme Court precedents on government-compelled bodily intrusions. In place of the ad hoc balancing tests the Court has tended to employ, this Article proposes a unified framework for assessing government-compelled bodily intrusions that recognizes substantive due process as the matrix for the right and that takes meaningful account of the psychological harms that accompany forced physical intrusions and the importance of considering less intrusive alternatives. This Article then applies the framework to forced blood drawing, an issue addressed in a recent Supreme Court decision, and to state pre-abortion ultrasound mandates, the subject of a developing circuit split. The proposed framework finally places the right against government-imposed bodily intrusions on its proper constitutional footing.


The opiatelike neuropeptide beta-endorphin produces a spectrum of effects that contrasts with that induced by the neuroleptic haloperidol. Rats injected intraventricularly or directly into the periaqueductal gray with beta-endorphin (0.5 to 50 micrograms) exhibited rigid immobility accompanied by the loss of righting reflex; the period of rigidity was preceded or followed (depending upon dose) by a state of hyperactivity. In contrast, no dose of haloperidol tested (0.5 to 12 milligrams per kilogram) produced rigidity, loss of righting reflex, or behavioral excitation. Furthermore, whereas animals injected with haloperidol remained stationary on a vertical grid, rats injected with beta-endorphin typically slid off the grid. Moreover, combined beta-endorphin and haloperidol treatment produced flaccidity in most animals. These results do not support the contention that this opiatelike peptide may be a naturally occurring neuroleptic.


Fine particles in urban atmospheres contain substantial quantities of semi-volatile material [e.g., NH4NO3 and semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs)] that are lost from particles during collection on a filter. Several diffusion denuder samplers have been developed for the determination of both NO3- and organic semi-volatile fine particulate components. The combination of technology used in the BOSS diffusion denuder sampler and the Harvard particle concentrator has resulted in the Particle Concentrator-Brigham Young University Organic Sampling System (PC-BOSS) for the 24-hr (or less) integrated collection of PM2.5, including NH4NO3 and semi-volatile organic material. Modification of the BOSS sampler allows for the weekly determination of these same species. Combination of BOSS denuder and tapered element oscillating microbalance (TEOM) monitor technology has resulted in the real-time ambient mass sampler (RAMS) for the continuous measurement of PM2.5, including the semi-volatile components. Comparison of the results obtained with the BOSS and with each of the newly developed modifications of the BOSS indicates that the modified versions can be used for the continuous, daily, or weekly monitoring of PM2.5, including semi-volatile species, as appropriate to the design of each sampler.


The drone fly (Eristalis tenax) pollinates many crops and is found almost worldwide. Its successful management as a field-crop pollinator would provide an additional option to augment bee pollination. We reviewed literature to assess their management potential. A literature search was conducted for information on drone-fly abundance across New Zealand crops, pollinator effectiveness, lifecycle-requirements and potential for mass rearing. Relevant literature was then evaluated to assess the feasibility, benefits and limitations of their management. Eristalis tenax is a proven pollinator of pak choi (Brassica rapa spp. chinensis), kiwifruit (Actinidia deliciosa) and onion (Allium cepa), and visits the flowers of several more crops in New Zealand. It readily completes its lifecycle under laboratory conditions when reared on various organic materials. No reviewed studies were identified that showed successful management of populations for the purpose of field-crop pollination. Key challenges for their management as field-crop pollinators include: being able to mass rear them at an appropriate scale; retaining numbers within targeted areas in the field; and ensuring their use does not significantly impact on non-target species and land-user interests.


In the mouse zygote and in two-cell stage embryos the inner leaflet of the nuclear envelope of pronuclei and that of blastomere and polar body II nuclei evaginate, forming multiple blebs within the perinuclear space, which contains a granular material. Blebbing exists only in oocytes activated by sperm in vivo or in vitro, or parthenogenetically by treatment with ethanol or puromycin. The germinal vesicle and an interphase nucleus formed after treatment of the oocyte at metaphase I by puromycin do not form blebs. Formation of blebs is specifically located in the cell cycle. The burst of the blebbing activity occurs during the first half of the cell cycle in one-cell embryos and in the earliest interphase period in the second cell cycle. Blebbing ceases from the beginning of the third cell cycle. The occurrence in the cytoplasm of 'double-layered' vesicles containing granular material resembling bleb contents and the disappearance of blebs from the nuclear envelope by the end of the cell cycle provide evidence that blebs represent a step in the transport of some material from the nucleus to the cytoplasm. Ethanolic phosphotungstic acid does not stain blebs, suggesting the absence of basic protein in their contents. Blebbing can be induced in somatic (thymocyte) and embryonic (blastomere of 8-cell stage embryo) nuclei following cell hybridization with activated oocytes. Their response to the oocyte cytoplasm by initiating blebbing depends on: (1) the position of the host cell in its cell cycle at the moment of hybridization, and (2) the time spent by the foreign nuclei in the host cytoplasm following cell fusion. If donor nuclei are introduced close to the time of activation, they start to produce blebs at the time corresponding to the initiation of blebbing by the female pronucleus in the first cell cycle. If foreign nuclei are introduced a few hours after activation they must be incubated in the host cytoplasm for some time before initiation of bleb formation, provided that the host pronucleus has initiated blebbing by that time. The existence of blebbing in nuclei formed only after oocyte activation, and the timing and the general occurrence of this event during the earliest cleavage stages of almost every mammalian embryo, suggest that this special nucleocytoplasmic transport plays a specific role at the beginning of development.


ABSTRACT Meer and Modood identify a variety of reasons why the notion that Muslim minorities could be subject to racism by virtue of their real or perceived 'Muslimness' is met with much less sympathy than the widely accepted notion that other religious minorities in Europe, particularly Jewish groups, can be the victims of racism. They begin by elaborating the relationships between Islamophobia, anti-Muslim sentiment and cultural racism, before turning to the results of interviews with journalists who make allegedly formative contributions to our understanding of anti-Muslim sentiment. Meer and Modood delineate and discuss four tendencies. The first is the conceptualization of racism that assumes that the protections afforded to racial minorities conventionally conceived as involuntarily constituted should not be extended to Muslims because theirs is a religious identity that is voluntarily chosen. The second is that the way that religion per se is frowned upon by the contemporary intelligentsia invites the ridiculing of Muslims as being salutary for intellectual debate and not, therefore, an issue of discrimination. Third, while ethnic identities are welcomed in the public space, there is much more unease about religious minorities. Finally, some find it difficult to sympathize with a minority that is perceived to be disloyal or associated with terrorism, a view that leads to a perception of Muslims as a threat rather than as a disadvantaged minority, subject to increasingly pernicious discourses of racialization. Each of these tendencies could benefit from further study, underscoring the need for a greater exploration of anti-Muslim discourse.


Exploring and mapping previously unknown environments while avoiding collisions with obstacles is a fundamental task for autonomous robots. In scenarios where this needs to be done rapidly, multi-rotors are a good choice for the task, as they can cover ground at potentially very high velocities. Flying at high velocities, however, implies the ability to rapidly plan trajectories and to react to new information quickly. In this paper, we propose an extension to classical frontier-based exploration that facilitates exploration at high speeds. The extension consists of a reactive mode in which the multi-rotor rapidly selects a goal frontier from its field of view. The goal frontier is selected in a way that minimizes the change in velocity necessary to reach it. While this approach can increase the total path length, it significantly reduces the exploration time, since the multi-rotor can fly at consistently higher speeds.


The Collaborative-Research Augmented Immersive Virtual Environment Laboratory at Rensselaer is a state-of-the-art space that offers users the capabilities of multimodality and immersion. Realistic and abstract sets of data can be explored in a variety of ways, even in large group settings. This paper discusses the motivations of the immersive experience and the advantages over smaller scale and single-modality expressions of data. One experiment focuss on the influence of immersion on perceptions of architectural renderings. Its findings suggest disparities between participants' judgment when viewing either two-dimensional printouts or the immersive CRAIVE-Lab screen. The advantages of multimodality are discussed in an experiment concerning abstract data exploration. Various auditory cues for aiding in visual data extraction were tested for their affects on participants' speed and accuracy of information extraction. Finally, artificially generated auralizations are paired with recreations of realistic spaces to analyze the influences of immersive visuals on the perceptions of sound fields. One utilized method for creating these sound fields is a geometric ray-tracing model, which calculates the auditory streams of each individual loudspeaker in the lab to create a cohesive sound field representation of the visual space.


Objective: To determine the association between oral health literacy, oral hygiene and gingival health status.
Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted among patients attending University of Benin Teaching Hospital, Benin City. Data were collected through interviewer-administered questionnaires. Index used in this study for estimating oral health literacy levels was Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Dentistry-30 (REALD-30). The participant's oral hygiene status was assessed using the Simplified Oral Hygiene Index while gingival health was assessed using the Gingival Index.
Results: Two hundred and eight participants with 130 (62.5%) males and 78 (37.5%) females formed the population of the study and their mean age was 28.32 ± 10.5 years.  The prevalence of low oral health literacy was 86 (41.3%). The oral hygiene status of most of the participants 100 (48.1) was fair. The prevalence of gingivitis was 58.2%. Oral health literacy had significant statistical negative correlation with age, oral hygiene and gingival health status. Oral health literacy consistently emerged as a predictor of oral hygiene and gingival health status.
Conclusion: Majority of the participants with low oral health literacy had fair/poor oral hygiene status (p = 0.000, OR= 17.870, 95% CI = 7.320-43.627) and gingivitis (p = 0.000, OR= 7.054, 95% CI = 3.514-14.164).
Keywords: Oral health literacy, Gingivitis, Oral hygiene


Purpose In France, the development of integrated services delivery for elderly (ISDE) has been hindered by the fragmentation of the decision-making institutions. By merging the healthcare and medicosocial institutions, the Health Regional Agencies (HRA), responsible for developing ISDE, theoretically constitutes a solution. The study examines how the HRA received and implemented the legislative mandate of the development of the ISDE. Theory We used the model of "receptivity to change strategic" developed by A.M. Pettigrew in the context of reforms of the National Health Service (NHS). Method An empirical study was conducted in 2011 in two phases: 1) 10 case studies of HRA, 2) questionnaire sent to all 26 HRAs. Results and conclusion The concentration of the decision powers in HRAs favors the deployment of ISDE. Three considerations limit this consideration: 1) lack of legislative instruments allows the HRA to reproduce a fragmented internal organization; 2) lack of prerogative on the social institutions; these institutions can develop contradictory policies; 3) new definition of norms and governance may slow down the deployment of ISDE. Discussion The deployment of ISDE relies on regional institutions that are subjected to changes. The on-going analysis will determine whether the new frames of reference and governance comply with the principles of services integration.