ABSTRACT Businesses are increasingly delegating activities in the advertising process to dominant online advertising platforms. This delegation yields the ad platforms tremendous power, akin to the principal–agent dilemma discussed in economics. One of the major platforms is called Google Ads—this platform is the focal point of our study. Over the years, Google has made substantial changes to its platform's features, which, in turn, govern what is possible and what is not for the advertisers. These changes impact the advertisers' ability to act independently and make their own choices, referred to as human agency. To better understand this impact, we examined 362 industry news articles reporting changes in Google Ads from 2015 to 2020. The findings indicate that while most changes increase human agency, this effect is becoming weaker over time, driven by automation. To better understand advertisers' attitudes towards automation, we surveyed 193 advertisers with Google Ads experience. Contrary to the popular belief that marketers are afraid of being replaced by algorithms, we found this to not be the case. Even though most advertisers indicated appreciation for maintaining their human agency, they did not perceive this agency being violated by the ad platform. However, we did observe interesting variability among respondents, reflected in three computational advertising attitude types: tinkerers, instrumentalists, and shepherds. We discuss the implications for advertisers in terms of strategizing in the face of reduced human agency and for ad platforms in terms of designing features that advertisers perceive as fair.


An upheaval of the economy in all parts of the world has recently taken place and has hit all the productive sectors including the agricultural one which is in a very critical state also in fertile areas and not only in poor and marginal ones where a gradual abandon of the land had already taken place years before. Since 1988, the European Union has paid particular attention to this problem, by trying to incentivate an intergrated rural development thinking of a prospective of intersectorial growth with the aim of achieving ways of sustainable agriculture which would lead to valid solutions both for ecology and for the economy. Today, however, even the agricultural productions thought to be rich, provide smaller and smaller incomes to the point that farmers are obliged to ask themselves at the end of the cultivation if it is worthwhile gathering the products or not. The abandon of the countryside could extend to fertile areas which would bring about a serious degeneration and environmental harm. A historian of our times Hobsbawm poses this very important question: "What will happen when extensive areas of the rural landscapes will no longer be needed, for an agriculture outdated and inefficient which it had created for long periods? It was the old agriculture which preserved the landscape. Without it what will happen?… replying that we are no longer defending nature, but a nature which is the outcome of an agricultural cultivation manmade". It is fundamental in these times to study sustainable agro-environmental systems which can create positive economical moves in order to increase traditional incomes to include the classical agricultural ones. The right use of all environmental and anthropical resources organized in a system is the way to transform the poverty of a lot of marginal areas of Apulia, of other Mediterranean countries and in the world into richness because it is this togetherness of resources, activity and initiative in an economical and organized synergy which can, lacking industrial and commercial possibilities and a remunerative agriculture, give way to environmental, economical and social benefits with positive outcomes on the economy and the employment. In relation to the importance of the environmental issues the Department for the Science of Vegetable Productions of the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Bari "Aldo Moro" which has carried out in time studies regarding the Territorial agronomy and the Ecology of the rural environment has, in 2008, set up a project called "T'ESSERE" written and scientifically co-ordinated by Dr. Maurizia Catalano with the aim of making the most of the Apulian territory as a whole, by means of a study of sustainable agro-environmental systems.


This study was performed in order to measure the level of knowledge of primary school students about postural disorders, to determine its effects on their lives and to provide proper posture techniques. The study was planned and performed in the order of pre test-post test in one group from pre-experimental designs. A questionnaire was used as the data collection tool. Students and their families were trained after pre-test phase. It was determined that students used correct position while sleeping (p=0.00) and writing (p=0.03), and they paid attention to body mechanics while carrying objects (on the arms p=0.00, on the back p=0.00) and lifting objects from the ground (p=0.00) after the training. As a result of this study, it was decided that training that was prepared for the adolescents and their parents to prevent postural disorders, is effective and applicable.


Reference models usually serve as starting points for developing company specific models. Unfortunately, successful usage of reference models is often impeded by various aspects, such as a lack of acceptance among employees, incorrect model implementation, or high project costs all of which more often than not are resulting from an imbalance between the model's complexity and the complexity of a company's specific structures. The paper at hand develops a methodical approach for taking a given reference model (the Maturity Model for Corporate Data Quality Management) and transforming it into a company specific model, with a particular focus on the specific complexity of a company's structures. Corporate Data Quality Management describes the quality oriented organization and control of a company's key data assets such as material, customer, and vendor data. Two case studies show how the method has been successfully implemented in real-world scenarios.


Robert Frank (1924-) is one of the most influential of the post-war photographers. Emigrating to the US in 1947, he began working in fashion and the advertising industry for magazines like Life, Fortune and The New York Times. A year later he left to travel through South America and Europe, shooting in Peru, Bolivia, London, Wales and France. Some of these images were published in Life and in the book Indiens Pas Morts. In 1955 he became the first European photographer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship. He used it to take a road-trip across the States, shooting scenes of ordinary American life, deliberately retaining the imperfections of the printing process in stark contrast to the perfectionism of contemporaries like Ansel Adams and Minor White. The resulting book, The Americans, radically changed the language of photography, gave rise to a new distinct art form in the photo-book and questioned the authority of the photograph as document. Published to accompany the major retrospective exhibition of Frank in the UK, Robert Frank will survey a career that has continued to develop and break new ground since the 1950s. Photographs from locations including Peru, London, Wales, Detroi


iSchools have their roots in the collection, storage, analysis, and dissemination of archived materials of human activities. We foresee that sensing data via lifelogging devices (or Internet of Things at large) will eventually shape its significant part in the coming years. Information Research and Learning with Lifelogging Devices (IRLLD) aims to offer a unique opportunity to experience various lifelogging devices such as wearable video recorders, wearable cameras, GPS sensors, and audio recorders. Following the successful 1st IRLLD at iConference 2016 SIE (Joho, Gurrin, & Hopfgartner, 2016), the 2nd edition of IRLLD at iConference 2017 SIE offers extended lifelogging devices such as biometric sensors. IRLLD 2017 also demonstrates how to access a large lifelog dataset called NTCIR-12 Lifelog Test Collection, created by the organisers of IRLLD 2017. The intended audience includes information behavioural researchers (both qualitative and quantitative), multimedia and/or UI developers, students who want to improve their work/life experience, and educators who explores the ways to develop reflective learning programs using lifelogging data.


Purpose This intervention was aimed to analyse the effect of academic writing and journal critiquing as educational approaches in improving critical thinking and collaborative learning among undergraduate medical students. Methods A research proposal writing format was created for the 4th year medical students of Melaka Manipal Medical College, Malaysia during their ophthalmology clinical postings. The students worked in small groups and developed research protocols through an evidence based approach. This was followed by writing reflective summaries in academic portfolios about the activity undertaken.A mixed methods study was designed to explore the possible role of collaborative research proposal writing in enhancing critical thinking and collaborative learning. Results Analysis of reflections submitted by 188 medical students after the intervention indicate that majority of them found an improvement in their skills of critical thinking and collaborative learning as a result of research protocol writing. All participants agreed that the model helped in applying concepts to new situations in the form of designing their own study, which reflected in enhanced higher order cognitive skills. Conclusion This study shows that the introduction of a structured module in the core medical curriculum that focuses on research writing skills embedded with collaborative and reflective practices can enhance collaborative learning, critical thinking, and reasoning among medical students.


PURPOSE
The role of environmental injury in carcinogenesis is widely recognized. Malignancy in exstrophic bladders has been reported most frequently in untreated adults and those undergoing surgical treatments which involve the mixing of fecal and urinary streams. The question of whether the closed exstrophic bladder has a similar potential for malignancy has not been resolved. The polypoid appearance of the exstrophic bladder template raises the concern of premalignant lesions. We characterized the histology of these lesions and analyzed their microscopic features with particular reference to predisposition for dysplasia. In doing so, we attempt to address the aforementioned question and set the stage for definitive quantification of the risk of malignancy in these patients with careful, long-term followup.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Under institutional board review, the slides of 38 patients with classic bladder exstrophy who had polyps excised at the time of closure were reviewed by a single genitourinary pathologist (JIE). The most common findings were reported for polyps resected at primary and secondary closure, respectively, and a comparative analysis was performed.

RESULTS
Of the 38 cases 24 were primary closures and 14 were secondary closures. Six of the primary closures were delayed by 6 weeks or greater. The 2 basic types of polyps observed were fibrotic and edematous. Both types were associated with overlying reactive squamous metaplasia in approximately 50% of cases. Varying degrees of fixed on file Brunn's nests, cystitis cystica and cystitis glandularis were noted. Cystitis glandularis was observed in a significantly greater percentage of secondary closures (p = 0.0014).

CONCLUSIONS
Although no dysplasia was noted, cystitis glandularis is associated with the development of adenocarcinoma of the bladder. The finding of cystitis glandularis suggests a more severe epithelial injury and it follows that the significant majority of these cases (10 of 14, 71.4%) were observed with polyps resected during secondary closure. These patients warrant future surveillance with urine cytology and cystoscopy as they enter adult life.


Electrophoresis continues to be a mainstay in molecular genetic laboratories for checking, sizing and separating both PCR products, nucleic acids derived from in vivo or in vitro sources and nucleic acid-protein complexes. Many genomic and genetic applications demand high throughput, such as the checking of amplification products from many loci, from many clones, from many cell lines or from many individuals at once. These applications include microarray resource development and expression analysis, genome mapping, library and DNA bank screening, mutagenesis experiments and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping. PCR hardware compatible with industry standard 96 and 384 well microplates is commonplace. We have previously described a simple system for submerged horizontal 96 and 192 well polyacrylamide or agarose microplate array diagonal gel electrophoresis (MADGE) which is microplate compatible and suitable for PCR checking, SNP typing (restriction fragment length polymorphism or amplification refractory mutation system), microsatellite sizing and identification of unknown mutations. By substantial redesign of format and operations, we have derived an efficient 'dry' gel system that enables direct 96 pin manual transfer from PCR or other reactions in microplates, into 768 or 384 well gels. Combined with direct electrode contact in clamshell electrophoresis boxes which plug directly to contacts in a powered stacking frame and using 5-10 min electrophoresis times, it would be possible (given a sufficient supply of PCRs for examination) for 1 million gel tracks to be run per day for a minimal hardware investment and at minimal reagent costs. Applications of this system for PCR checking and SNP genotyping are illustrated.


The aim of this study is to determine the energy absorption capacities of the reinforced concrete (RC) beams of the same concrete class and to obtain the performances of the steel-fiber added beams according to the damage characteristics obtained by the explosive loading. In this paper, effects of blast load on the RC beams samples with and without steel fiber have been investigated. First, the compressive strength of concrete made with and without steel fiber have been measured. Second, the load carrying capasities of the RC beams produced with and without steel fiber are determined by two point loading test. Lust, the damage levels under explosive loading applied on the RC beams produced with and without steel fiber have been observed. The results show that RC beams made with steel fiber is damaged less in blast loading than that of conventional RC beams. The results also show that the expression used in calculating the amount of the explosive material needs to be revised.


The extremely skewed female-biased sex ratio in the desert moss Syntrichia caninervis was investigated by assessing the regeneration capacity of detached leaves. Juvenile, green, yellow-green, and brown leaves equating to approximately 0, 2, 6, and 12 yr of age, respectively, were detached from individuals of S. caninervis collected from 10 field populations and grown in a growth chamber for 58 d at a light intensity of 33-128 μmol · m(-2) · s(-1). Younger leaves (0-2 yr old) tended to have a greater viability, regenerate more quickly, extend their protonemal filaments farther, produce shoots (gametophores) more quickly, produce more shoots, and accumulate a greater biomass than older leaves (6 and 12 yr old). Among younger leaf classes, regenerating female leaves were more likely to produce a shoot than male leaves and produced more shoots than male leaves. The sexes did not differ significantly in time until protonemal emergence, linear extension of protonemata, or rate of biomass accumulation. However, protonemata of male leaves tended to emerge more quickly and produce a greater total biomass, ultimately consisting mostly of protonemata, than did female leaves. The more rapid proliferation of shoots by female leaf regenerants may help to explain the rarity of males in this species.


A laboratory study was conducted to evaluate the effect of aeration rate, temperature, and manure loading rate on nitrogen transformations in swine manure slurries. Periodic samples were collected and analyzed for residual organic N, NH₄-N, NO₂-N, and NO₃-N, as well as NH₃ volatilized from the aerated slurries. It was found that organic N decreased rapidly leaving a rather constant fraction after the first several weeks. At the end of the 83-day study at 25C, one-fourth of the N remained in solution in organic forms. This represents N that was not mineralized and consequently would not be lost during the denitrification process. From 16 to 26% of the added N was volatilized as NH₃-N and from 48 to 87% of the added C was evolved as CO₂-C during the study. Increasing temperature, increasing loading rate, and increasing aeration tended to increase volatilization of NH₃ and CO₂. An N balance at the conclusion of the study showed that 22 to 48% of the N was unaccounted for. While the mechanism responsible for the N losses was not determined, NH₃ volatilization apparently predominated. The quantities of lost N increased with an increase in temperature. There appeared to be no relationship between the losses of N and changes in concentration of oxidized forms of N in solution. While nitrification occurred in extensively aerated swine-manure slurries, about 1/4 of the original total N was not mineralized. As this represents a rather stable form and because only 3% of added N occurred in a mineral form at any given time, the extent of denitrification would be limited. Consequently, nitrification-denitrification schemes probably have limited application to N removal from waste substances.


Managing rapid population growth and spurring economic growth are among the most pressing policy challenges for Sub-Saharan Africa. We discuss the links between them and investigate the potential of family planning programs to address these challenges. Specifically, we estimate the impact of family planning programs on income per capita that can arise via the demographic dividend (DD), a boost to per capita income that operates through a chain of causality related to declining fertility. We develop a model to determine the impact of "meeting unmet need" (MUN) for modern contraceptive methods on fertility and hence on the population age structure in the coming years. We also estimate empirically the DD that has been observed in other countries, using a cross-country regression with panel data covering 40 years. Using the age structure projected by MUN and the empirical estimates of the DD, we estimate the potential for additional economic growth in Kenya, Nigeria, and Senegal. We find that in 2030, these countries can enjoy an increase in per capita income of 8-13% by meeting one-third of their unmet need for modern contraception and can enjoy a 31-65% higher income per capita by meeting all of the unmet need. By 2050, these ranges become 13-22% and 47-87% respectively. We discuss the policy implications of our findings.


The ECB's one size monetary policy is unlikely to fit all euro area members at all times, which raises the question of how much monetary policy stress this causes at the national level. I measure monetary policy stress as the difference between actual ECB interest rates and Taylor-rule implied optimal rates at the member state level. Optimal rates explicitly take into account the natural rate of interest to capture changes in trend growth. I find that monetary policy stress within the euro area has been steadily decreasing prior to the recent financial crisis. Current stress levels are not only lower today than in the late 1990s, they are also in line with what is commonly observed among U.S. states or pre-euro German Lander.


Phenotypically identical mammalian cells often display considerable variability in transcript levels of individual genes. How transcriptional activity propagates in cell lineages, and how this varies across genes is poorly understood. Here we combined live-cell imaging of short- lived transcriptional reporters in mouse embryonic stem cells with mathematical modelling to quantify the propagation of transcriptional activity over time and across cell generations. In sister cells we found mean transcriptional activity to be strongly correlated and transcriptional dynamics tended to be synchronous; both features control how quickly sister cells diverge in a gene-specific manner. Mean transcriptional activity was also highly correlated between mother and daughter cells, leading to multi-generational transcriptional memory whose duration scaled with the spread of transcriptional activities in the population. The resulting family-specific transcriptional levels suggest a potential role of transcriptional memory in patterning tissue gene expression.


This paper presents a model for automatic summarization of videos recorded by wearable cameras. The proposed model detects various user activities by computing the transform of matching image features among video frames. Four basic types of user activities are proposed, including "moving closer /farther", "panning", "making a turn", and "rotation". Different summarization techniques are provided for different activity types, and a wearable video sequence can be summarized as a compact set of panoramic images. The user activity analysis is solely based on the analysis of images, without resorting to the information of other sensors. Experimental results on a 19- minute video sequence demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed model.


Numerical analysis method was used to reduce the number of functionally graded material (FGM) layers for joining Si3N4-Al2O3 using polytypoid interlayer by estimating the position of crack. In the past, hot press sintering of multi-layered FGMs with 20 layers of thickness 500 mm each have been fabricated successfully. In this paper, thermal residual stresses were calculated using finite element method (FEM) to find the optimized number of layers and its thicknesses of FGM joint. The number of layers for FGM was reduced to 15 layers from 20 layers. Thicknesses were varied to minimize residual stresses within the layers while reducing the number of FGM layers. The damage caused by thermal residual stress was estimated using maximum principal stress theory and maximum tensile stress theory. The calculated maximum stress was found to be axial stress of 430 MPa around 90% 12H/10% Al2O3 area. For each case, calculated strength of each FGM layer by linear rule of mixture was compared with computed thermal residual stresses. Thermal analysis results correctly predicted the position of crack, and this position agreed well with fabricated joints. Therefore, this numerical analysis method can be applied to reduced FGM layers of crack free joint. Finally, new composition profile of crack free joint was proposed using FGM method. [doi:10.2320/matertrans.MRA2007319]


The dominant asymptotic stress feild near the tip of a Mode-I crack of Yeoh-model-based rubber-like materials is determined. The analysis bases on the fully nonlinear equilibrium theory of incompressible hyperelastic solids. First, The nonlinear PDE (partial differential equation) governig the leading behavior of y2 is transformed to a linear PDE. Then the linear PDE is solved and the solution of y2 is obtained. With the solution of y2 and boundery conditions the numerical solution of y1 is obtained,too.Finally,the analysis solution in polar coordinate of the first Kirchhoff Stress in plane stress state is obtained .


School leader training in Sweden is meant to act as one of several forces to improve the functioning of the school, and to develop the function and the personality of the school leader. The training programme is compulsory, continues for two years and consists of three parts - course periods, home periods, and society oriented practical experience.In this investigation a distinction was made between a training programme focusing on the individual or the organization. These concepts were explored in an analysis of programme curriculum in relation to theory and research in the area of planned change and in a study of the degree of implementation of the programme.Data were obtained by means of a study of documentary material and a questionnaire study. The latter study was designed as theory-based evaluation and a new conceptof validity-prospective validity - was explored. The analysis of the curriculum showed that the programme could be looked upon as a normative-reeducative strategy for planned change. The questionnaire study showed that the training had not been carried out entirely according to the formulated intensions. This led to the conclusion that the training largely had been focusing on the individual, which should influence the schoolleader as an individual and his professional role, but to a lesser extent the development in his school. This prediction of future effects was in most cases supported by the school leaders' description of the short-term effects, by a financial report produced within the framework of the school leader training and by the analysis of research in the area of planned change.


This paper presents a 5.8 GHz dedicated short range communication (DSRC) CMOS RF-SoC transceiver with digitally controlled RF architecture for China electronic toll collection (ETC) system. The operation of key RF blocks, such as ASK modulator, power amplifier, LNA, and mixer, are directly controlled by digital baseband. Compared with state-of-the-art designs in literature, this work demonstrates remarkable advantages in design simplicity, Tx output peak power, adjacent channel power ratio (ACPR), dynamic range, occupied bandwidth (OBW), bit error rate (BER), and so on.


The QUAD method is a fast, flexible numerical pricing technique, widely applicable to many option types in its QUAD I and QUAD II versions where the underlying process has a closed-form density function or characteristic function. In its most advanced version, QUAD III, sacrificing only a little speed, it retains all the flexibility and applicability of earlier versions while covering an even greater range of underlying processes through use of approximations of the density functions. In this article, the authors show how cases without suitable approximations can be handled by using finite difference methods for (only) that part of the calculation. They illustrate with the no-arbitrage SABR model for the underlying. TOPICS: Derivatives, options Key Findings • Option pricing techniques under the umbrella term QUAD are the fastest generally applicable and flexible numerical methods we have for derivatives pricing. • Cases where there is no transition density function or characteristic function can be solved by using an approximation of the particular density function. However, in this article, an alternative approach is demonstrated, substituting finite difference calculations for the approximation. • The no-arbitrage SABR model is used as an example, since it is of special interest to practitioners.


It was well known that atomic fluorine and oxygen radicals play a vital role in plasma etching processes. This thesis investigates the density of fluorine and oxygen radical species using different diagnostic techniques in a parallel-plate capacitively coupled reactive ion etching plasma source. The behaviour of absolute atomic fluorine density in SF6/O2/Ar plasma was investigated using appearance potential mass spectrometry as a function of feedstock mixture, gas pressure and applied rf power. Contrary to naive expectations, atomic fluorine density was found to increase with dilution of O2 in SF6 discharge operated at 100 W and reached a peak value at ≈ 20-30% O2 content. This increase in fluorine atom density can be due to decrease in fluorine atom loss rate at walls through surface recombination and production of fluorine atoms through gas- phase reactions involving SFx (where x = 1-5) and atomic oxygen. However, atomic fluorine density was found to decrease with further addition of oxygen to discharge due to decrease in SF6 partial pressure. Absolute fluorine atom density investigated using APMS technique, was found to increase with increase in gas pressure in SF6/O2/Ar discharge (70/26/4 %) operated at 100 W rf power. Increase in fluorine atom density can be mainly due to increase in SF6 partial pressure as electron density was found to be in weak correlation with pressure.

A non-invasive, compact and low cost industrial sensor would always be essential to monitor any variations in the plasma. Optical emission spectroscopy was one of such diagnostic tool and using it relative variations in radical density in plasma discharge can be monitored by a popular technique known as actinometry. In this thesis, fluorine actinometry technique was adopted to investigate relative fluorine density variations in capacitively coupled discharge and for validation of fluorine actinometry, relative [F] measurements were compared with APMS measurements. At low pressure conditions, actinometric limitation was violated as relative [F] measured using actinometry had poor correlation with APMS measurements. This could be largely due to additional excitation contribution to fluorine actinometric signal. With negligible changes to discharge characteristics, addition of significant amount of O2 to SF6 discharge could possible suppress additional excitation contribution to fluorine signal as relative [F] measured using actinometry and APMS established good agreement. At higher pressures, fluorine actinometric data was proportional to APMS measurements and thus, fluorine actinometric behaviour was validated. Proportionality constant (K) required for fluorine actinometry, was evaluated and its dependence at different discharge conditions were analysed.

Kinetics behaviour of electrons in O2 discharge as a function of gas pressure was investigated using Langmuir probe. Discharge transition in oxygen plasma was investigated from pressure evolution of electron energy probability function (EEPF), electron density and temperature. However, structure was observed in measured EEPF for pressure > 400 mTorr at 200 W rf power and EEPF tail found to enhance which violated inverse proportionality between ionization rate and neutral gas density in accordance to particle balance equation. Such unusual EEPF characteristic was caused mainly due to inadequate rf compensation in the probe and unaccounted variations in plasma potential when probe tip was biased. In addition to this, the behaviour of absolute [O] was investigated as a function of gas pressure using actinometry and Langmuir probe. Good agreement was achieved when relative variations of [O] from actinometry were compared to TALIF measurements under similar experimental conditions.

Actinometric technique was successfully validated in monitoring the variations of ground state fluorine and oxygen for discharge pressures ≥ 200 mTorr and can be adopted in industry to monitor radical species in processing plasmas. It should be mentioned that optical emissions lines used in this work to monitor [F] and [O] could have significant dissociative contribution at low pressures.


Exploited marine ecosystems are a common feature of the modern world and area closures (marine reserves; MRs) have been suggested from both conservation and fishery management perspectives as a technique to rebuild over-fished populations. MRs provide an interesting experimental treatment where humans are excluded from resource harvesting. In the absence of exploitation, marine species have been observed to return to levels of abundance similar to historic accounts of virgin biomass (biomass under an exploitation level of 0). This thesis investigates the impact and potential of MRs in both New Zealand and Chile for achieving conservation and fishery management goals through the use of underwater observation, historic information, fishers' ecological knowledge (FEK), bioeconomic fishery modeling and ecosystem modeling ... Overall, this thesis has investigated the effects of human coastal resource use in New Zealand and Chile from social, economic and ecological perspectives through the use of different techniques by synthesising both quantitative and qualitative information sources. MRs are a valuable tool from conservation, management and scientific perspectives as they can rebuild overexploited stocks and return the ecosystem to a more historic state. MRs also provide an understanding of the interaction between coastal resource use and ecosystem-wide changes, which is a crucial element for ecosystem-based management. This thesis has illustrated the importance of comparing present stock biomasses to historic baselines to understand the impacts of exploitation of coastal resources on marine ecosystems.


While variations in sedimentary organic matter (OM) quantity, biochemical composition and nutritional quality as well as in meiofaunal abundance and assemblage composition at the macro- and mesoscale are relatively well known, information about variations at the microscale is much scarcer. To shed some light on this issue, we tested the null hypothesis by which abundance and composition of the meiofaunal assemblages, and the quantity, biochemical composition and nutritional quality of sedimentary organic matter in coastal shallow environments do not vary within a frame of 1 m2. No significant variation within the frame emerged for OM quantity, nutritional quality, biochemical composition and the abundance of meiofaunal assemblages. On the other hand, the composition of meiofaunal assemblages varied significantly within the frame and exhibited a clear segregation of assemblages farther to the shore, as a likely result of local micro-hydrodynamic conditions. Spatial autocorrelation analysis revealed that lipid and protein sedimentary contents had a random distribution, whereas carbohydrate and biopolymeric C contents and meiofaunal total abundance were characterized by a patchy distribution, with discrete peaks within the sub-frame squares (ca. 0.1 m2). Phytopigments showed a spatial positive autocorrelation distribution, following the micro-hydrodynamic pattern, with patches larger than the sub-frame square, but smaller than the entire one (1 m2). Overall, our results suggest that, within 1 m2 of subtidal sandy sediments, three replicates could be sufficient to assess correctly OM attributes and the abundance of meiofauna, but could be possibly inadequate for assessing meiofaunal assemblages' composition at a finer scale (<1 m2).


The exhibit "Harry Potter's World" and the lecture and film series sponsored by the University of Florida Health Science Center Libraries, the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere with support from the Rothman Fund, and the Catalyst Fund


Philosophy for Children (henceforth P4C) is a program and a pedagogy for teaching philosophy in k-12 school that was first developed by Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp. The P4C approach is generally presented as a valuable form of education for democratic citizenship. This relationship is so obvious that it often remains underdeveloped: P4C is constructed with the goal of developing children to be critical thinkers and to know how to dialogue with others, which are also hallmarks of what is wanted in the citizens of our democracies. The objective of this article is to explore and deepen this connection by analyzing how it has been developed in the literature of the P4C movement. What emerges from this study is that there are differences of opinions as to why P4C is an appropriate kind of education for democracy. From the texts analyzed, three pedagogies stood out in that regard: Deweyan pedagogy, critical pedagogy, and pedagogy of interruption. I analyze the different visions of P4C as a democratic education in each of these, present the different criticisms they offer to P4C in that regard, and propose how P4C may answer these criticisms. I conclude with the importance of practitioners being aware of the different perspectives that encompass P4C concerning its role for education for democratic citizenship.


OBJECTIVE
To determine the risk factors, clinical characteristics, surgical management and outcome of pseudoaneurysm secondary to iatrogenic or traumatic vascular injury.

METHODS
This was a cross-sectional study being performed in department of cardiovascular and thoracic surgery skims soura during a 4-year period. We included all the patients referring to our center with primary diagnosis of pseudoaneurysm. The pseudoaneurysm was diagnosed with angiography and color Doppler sonography. The clinical and demographic characteristics were recorded and the risk factors were identified accordingly. Patients with small swelling (less than 5-cm) and without any complication were managed conservatively. They were followed for progression and development of complications in relation to swelling. Others underwent surgical repair and excision. The outcome of the patients was also recorded.

RESULTS
Overall we included 20 patients with pseudoaneurysm. The mean age of the patients was 42.1±0.6 years. Among them there were 11 (55%) men and 9 (45%) women. Nine (45%) patients with end stage renal disease developed pseudoaneurysm after inadvertent femoral artery puncture for hemodialysis; two patients after interventional cardiology procedure; one after femoral embolectomy; one developed after fire arm splinter injury and one formed femoral artery related pseudoaneurysm after drainage of right inguinal abscess. The most common site of pseudoaneurysm was femoral artery followed by brachial artery. Overall surgical intervention was performed in 17 (85%) patients and 3 (15%) were managed conservatively.

CONCLUSION
End stage renal disease is a major risk factor for pseudoaneurysm formation. Coagulopathy, either therapeutic or pathological is also an important risk factor. Patients with these risk factors need cannulation of venous structures for hemodialysis under ultrasound guide to prevent inadvertent arterial injury. Patients with end stage renal disease who sustain inadvertent arterial puncture during cannulation for hemodialysis should receive compression dressings for 5 to 7 days.


An evolutionary perspective on economic behavior has to account for the influences that the human genetic endowment has on the choices the agents make. Likely to have been fixed in times of fierce selection pressure, this endowment is presumably adapted to the living conditions of early humans. If at all, behavioral economics accounts for its influences on economic decision making in a way similar to the approach taken by evolutionary psychology, i.e. by focusing on decision heuristics and their tensions with modern rationality standards. In an evolutionary perspective, that focus needs to be extended so as to also embrace the motivational underpinnings of economic behavior. In the language of economics this means to inquire into the agents' preferences and to explain how they relate to the human genetic endowment and how they change over time. The paper discusses several implications of such an extension.


Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine whether Selection, Optimization and Compensation (SOC) Strategy mediated the relationship between job stress and health promoting behaviors among nurses. Methods: A descriptive causal relationship research design was used. 245 subjects recruited from the five general hospitals, which have over 500 beds in Seoul and Kyunggi-do, participated in the study by completing a survey which included questions about SOC strategy, job stress and health promoting behaviors. t-test, ANOVA, Pearson's correlation coefficient and multiple regression were used to analyze the data. SPSS/WIN 20.0 was used for all analysis. Results: The mean job stress score was 47.89; mean SOC strategy score was .71. 'Spiritual development' was the highest reported health promoting behavior with a mean of 3.57. Job stress was significantly and negatively related to health promoting behaviors. The result showed that all the mediating paths of SOC strategy were significant. The partial mediating model showed high goodness of fit demonstrating that the model was outstanding. Conclusion: SOC strategy mediated the relationship between job stress and health promoting behaviors. Applying better SOC strategies among nurses will increase flexibility in responding to job stress and will also better perform health promoting behaviors.


Oligogalacturonic acid (OGA) affects plant growth and development in an antagonistic manner to that of the auxin indole-3-acetic acid (IAA), the mechanism by which remains to be determined. This study describes the relationship between IAA and OGA activity in intact cucumber (Cucumis sativus) seedlings. Both OGA and IAA induced rapid and transient extracellular alkalinization; however, the characteristics of the OGA and IAA responses differed in their kinetics, magnitude, calcium dependence, and region of the root in which they induced their maximal response. IAA (1 μm) induced a saturating alkalinization response of approximately 0.2 pH unit and a rapid reduction (approximately 80%) in root growth that only partially recovered over 20 h. OGAs, specifically those with a degree of polymerization of 10 to 13, induced a maximal alkalinization response of 0.48 pH unit, but OGA treatment did not alter root growth. Saturating concentrations of OGA did not block IAA-induced alkalinization or the initial IAA-induced inhibition of root growth but allowed IAA-treated roots to recover their initial growth rate within 270 min. IAA-induced alkalinization occurs primarily in the growing apical region of the root, whereas OGA induced its maximal response in the basal region of the root. This study demonstrates that OGA and IAA act by distinct mechanisms and that OGA does not simply act by inhibition of IAA action. These results also suggest that IAA-induced extracellular alkalinization is not sufficient to account for the mechanism by which IAA inhibits root growth.


Although superficially the prospects for metropolitan government in the United States are still dismissed as politically whimsical, latent forces are at work that bring structural regional reform back on the public agenda. Not only is there a resurgence of scholarly interest, but more importantly, major economic and political considerations both argue for new coalitions encouraging metropolitan collaboration. Persistent inequities and redundancy in local government and the need to adopt global perspectives suggest that genuine changes may be underway.


Infrastructure and Application Service Delivery typically comprises of complex workflows such as software installation/configuration, OS configuration, file system management etc. To manage costs as well as SLAs, enterprises constantly look towards automation of these workflows. While declarative approaches for automated workflow planning have been described in the literature, they do not address the risk exposure of the system. We present a novel two-phase risk-aware approach to planning which allows to "look-ahead" beyond the desired end state and compute a vulnerability score that measures how vulnerable the system could be in future, if the plan were to be executed now. We demonstrate our approach on a web service migration use-case using SGPlan as the preference-based planner. We also implement an end-to-end framework based on Puppet and validate it on a test bed of virtual machines. The implementation validates the generality of our approach in finding a less-vulnerable plan in scenarios where there are multiple plans.


Background

Due to population aging, it is essential to examine to what extent rises in life expectancy (LE) consist of healthy or unhealthy years. Most health expectancy studies have been based on single health measures and have shown divergent trends. We used a multi-domain indicator, complex health problems (CHP), indicative of the need for integrated medical and social care, to investigate how LE with and without CHP developed in Sweden between 1992 and 2011. We also addressed whether individuals with CHP more commonly lived in the community in 2011 compared to earlier years.
Methods

CHP were defined as having severe problems in at least two of three health domains related to the need for medical and/or social care: symptoms/diseases, cognition/communication, and mobility. The Swedish Panel Study of Living Conditions of the Oldest Old (SWEOLD), a nationally representative survey of the Swedish population aged ≥ 77 years with waves in 1992, 2002 and 2011 (n ≈ 2000), was used to estimate the prevalence of CHP. Age- and gender-specific death rates were obtained from the Human Mortality Database. The Sullivan method was deployed to calculate the remaining life expectancy with and without CHP. The estimates were decomposed to calculate the contribution of changes from morbidity and mortality to the overall trends in LE without CHP.
Results

Between 1992 and 2011, both total LE (+ 1.69 years [95% CI 1.56;1.83] and LE without CHP (+ 0.84 years [-0,87;2.55]) at age 77 increased for men, whereas LE at age 77 increased for women (+ 1.33 [1.21;1.47]) but not LE without CHP (-0.06 years [-1.39;1.26]). When decomposing the trend, we found that the increase in LE with CHP was mainly driven by an increase in the prevalence of CHP. Among individuals with CHP the proportion residing in residential care was lower in 2011 (37%) compared to 2002 (58%) and 1992 (53%).


Glycine-rich RNA-binding proteins (GRP) are involved in post-transcriptional regulation, and play important roles in plant growth, development and stress response. In the present study, the full-length cDNA of a GRP gene (LbGRP, GenBank accession number: GQ398238) was cloned from a cDNA library of Limonium bicolor. To investigate the stress tolerance of LbGRP, the recombinant plasmid pYES2-LbGRP was constructed by inserting the LbGRP gene into the yeast expression vector pYES2. The recombinant plasmid pYES2-LbGRP was transformed into yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae INVSc1, and the INVSc1 strain transformed with empty pYES2 was used as the control. The recombinant yeast INVSc1 harboring LbGRP (pYES2-LbGRP) and the control INVSc1 harboring empty pYES2 were treated with NaCl, KCl, Na- HCO3, Na2CO3, drought and frezzing, respectively, and their survial rates were compared under these stress conditions. The results showed that the survival rates of the recombinant yeast INVScl (pYES2-LbGRP) were higher than that of the control strain under these stress conditions, indicating that the LbGRP is tolerant to NaCl, KCl, NaHCO3, Na2CO3, drought and frezzing stresses. These results suggested that LbGRP plays a role in stress tolerance of L. bicolor.


Photonic crystals (PhCs) influence the propagation of light by their periodic variation in dielectric contrast or refractive index. This review outlines the attractive optical qualities inherent to most PhCs namely the presence of full or partial photonic band gaps and the possibilities they present towards the inhibition of spontaneous emission and the localization of light. Colloidal self-assembly of polymer or silica spheres is one of the most favoured and low cost methods for the formation of PhCs as artificial opals. The state of the art in growth methods currently used for colloidal self-assembly are discussed and the use of these structures for the formation of inverse opal architectures is then presented. Inverse opal structures with their porous and interconnected architecture span several technological arenas – optics and optoelectronics, energy storage, communications, sensor and biological applications. This review presents several of these applications and an accessible overview of the physics of photonic crystal optics that may be useful for opal and inverse opal researchers in general, with a particular emphasis on the recent use of these three-dimensional porous structures in electrochemical energy storage technology. Progress towards all-optical integrated circuits may lie with the concepts of the photonic crystal, but the unique optical and structural properties of these materials and the convergence of PhC and energy storage disciplines may facilitate further developments and non-destructive optical analysis capabilities for (electro)chemical processes that occur within a wide variety of materials in energy storage research.


Evolutionary structural testing is a technique that uses specific approaches based on guided searches algorithms. It involves evaluating fitness functions to determine whether test data satisfy or not various structural testing criteria. For testing multi-way decision constructs the nested \textit{If-Then-Else} structure and Alternative Critical Branches (ACBs) approaches are generally used. In this paper a new evolutionary structural approach based on Compact and Minimized Control Flow Graph (CMCFG) which uses two different formulas for evaluating the performance of test data, is presented. The CMCFG approach is derived from the concept of Control Flow Graph (CFG). Experiments on different \textit{Switch-Case} constructs with different nesting levels have demonstrated that CMCFG yields significantly better results in finding test data which cover a particular target branch in comparison with the previous approaches.


Background: Wilms' tumor is the most common malignant renal tumor in the pediatric age group. This tumor is classically managed by multimodal treatment which involves surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy. While there is plenty of data in world literature on the outcome of Wilms' tumor, there is a paucity of data from India. Methods: All patients with proven diagnosis of Wilms' tumor between 2008 to 2012 were noted from the hospital's cancer registry. We performed detailed analyses of all patients' clinical case records for demographic profiles, clinical features, imaging studies, treatment, and outcome. Histopathological classification of the tumor determined the patient's post-operative management. All patients were followed for a period of 3 years and we analyzed the eventual outcome in the form of disease-free survival, complications, tumor recurrence, and mortality. Results: There were 31 cases of Wilms' tumor included in this study. The median age of presentation was 3-4 years (range: 5 months-6 years) with a female: male ratio of 1.2:1. Abdominal mass was the chief presenting feature in 20 (64.5%) patients followed by abdominal pain in 6 (19.3%). All children had unilateral disease, 25 (80.6%) had right-sided and 6 (19.3%) had left-sided disease. Bilateral disease was seen in only one case. Of the 31 cases of Wilms' tumor, 36% cases presented with stages I and II disease, 55% had stage III, and 9% of the cases were stage IV. Most cases of Wilms' tumor were stage III. The majority had classical Wilms' tumor with a favourable histology. The estimated 5-year event free survival was 87.3% Conclusion: A multidisciplinary approach can approach similar survival rates compared to the National Wilms' Tumor Study Group, even in the Indian scenario. Further improvement in survival of these children can only be achieved by increasing awareness, early recognition, appropriate referral, and a multidisciplinary approach.


Dynamical systems for hypersurface homogeneous and hypersurface self-similar models with non-null symmetry surfaces are derived. The equations are cast in a geometric form based on properties of the symmetry surfaces that emphasize the close connection between the various models. Perfect fluid models are discussed in particular. It is shown how the models form a hierarchical structure where simpler models act as building blocks for more complicated ones. Expressions for the fluid's kinematic properties are given and discussed in the context of various special cases.


Endoscopic surgery is performed through a smaller incision than that is made in conventional surgery, and thus is superior in terms of reduced physical burden on the patient and shorter duration of hospitalization. To achieve this surgery, there is active research and development of surgical robots using master-slave system. However, operations without tactile sense may cause inclusion of a fatal accident. Although the master-slave system using the force feedback has been also studied, the velocity-force control algorithm is used because of guarantee of stability for close-loop system. However, velocity-force control involves the risk of causing a deviation in position between the master device and the remote robot if velocity information is missing due to network packet loss and/or the jitter of communication latency. In order to solve this problem, position-force control for an IBIS surgical robot is proposed in this study. First, the frequency characteristics of the surgical robot is measured, and it is shown that passivity is not achieved in the master or slave, and that direct connection will cause system destabilization. Next, a wave filter is designed for the proposed method based on the obtained frequency characteristics, and it is shown that implementing this method led to stabilization. Finally, a remote operation experiment shows that regardless of communication latency, the slave moves stably to the position instructed by the operator, and the reaction force detected by the slave can be transmitted to the operator. 


High fidelity textured geometric models are a fundamental starting point for computer graphics, simulation, visualization, design, and analysis. Existing tools for acquiring 3D models of large scale (e.g., urban) geometry, from imagery, require significant manual input and suffer other algorithmic scaling limitations. We are pursuing a research and engineering effort to develop a novel sensor and associated geometric algorithms, to achieve fully automated reconstruction from close range color images of textured geometric models representing built urban structures. The sensor is a geo-located camera, which annotates each acquired digital image with metadata recording the date and time of image acquisition, and estimating the position and orientation of the acquiring camera in a global (geodetic) coordinate system. This metadata enables the formulation of reconstruction algorithms which scale well both with the number and spatial density of input images, and the complexity of the reconstructed model. We describe our initial dataset of about four thousand geo-located images acquired through a prototype sensor, manual surveying, and semi automated refinement of navigation information. We demonstrate, for a small of office park on the MIT campus, the operation of fully automated algorithms for generating hemispherical image mosaics, for reconstructing vertical building facades, and for estimating high resolution texture information for each facade. Finally, we describe the status of our efforts, and discuss several significant research and engineering challenges facing the project.


We report a 28‐year‐old‐female who presented with primary amenorrhoea, absence of puberty, obesity and normal stature. The subject was clearly short as a child, with a height more than 2 SD below normal until the age of 15 years. The pubertal growth spurt failed to develop. She continued growing at a prepubertal rate until growth ceased at the age of 20 years, reaching her final adult height of 157 cm (SDS −0·86) without hormonal treatment. A combined pituitary hormone stimulation test of anterior pituitary function showed deficiencies of GH, LH and FSH, and low normal serum levels of TSH and PRL. Magnetic resonance imaging revealed a hypoplastic pituitary with markedly reduced pituitary height. In addition, a whole body dual energy X‐ray absorptiometry scan showed high levels of body fat (54%). Combined pituitary hormone deficiencies with a hypoplastic pituitary suggested the diagnosis of a Prophet of Pit‐1 (PROP1) gene mutation. Normal stature in this case, however, confounded this diagnosis. Sequencing of PROP1 revealed homozygosity for a single base‐pair substitution (C to T), resulting in the replacement of an Arg by a Cys at codon 120 (R120C) in the third helix of the homeodomain of the Prop‐1 protein. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a patient with a mutation in the PROP1 gene that attained normal height without hormonal treatment, indicating a new variability in the PROP1 phenotype, with important implications for the diagnosis of these patients. We suggest that this can be explained by (i) the presence of low levels of GH in the circulation during childhood and adolescence; (ii) the lack of circulating oestrogen delaying epiphyseal fusion, resulting in growth beyond the period of normal growth; and (iii) fusion of the epiphyseal plates, possibly as a result of circulating oestrogens originating from peripheral conversion of androgens by adipose tissue.


This paper presents discontinuity adaptive image estimation within the Kalman filter framework by non-Gaussian modeling of the image prior. A generalized methodology is proposed for specifying state-dynamics using the conditional density of the state given its neighbors, without explicitly defining the state equation. The novelty of our approach lies in directly obtaining the predicted mean and variance of the non-Gaussian state conditional density by importance sampling and incorporating them in the update step of the Kalman filter. Experimental results are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in preserving edges.


Light-level geolocators are currently widely used to track the migration of small-sized birds, but their potentially detrimental effects on survival of highly aerial species have been poorly investigated so far. We recorded capture–recapture histories of 283 common swifts Apus apus and 107 pallid swifts Apus pallidus breeding in 14 colonies in Italy, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland that were equipped with 10 different types of geolocators ('geolocator birds'), and compared their survival with that of, respectively, 215 common and 101 pallid swifts not equipped with geolocators ('control birds'). Data were analysed using both GLMMs with return rate as a proxy for survival and mark–recapture models to estimate survival while accounting for recapture probability. In all the analyses, geolocator birds showed reduced apparent survival compared to controls. Geolocator weight was always lower than 3% of body mass, and did not affect survival per se. Geolocators with a light-stalk, which is used in some geolocator models to reduce light sensor shading by feathers, decreased apparent survival more than models without light-stalk. Apparent survival of geolocator birds significantly varied among sites, being much higher in northern Europe. Despite in our analyses we could only partly account for variable recapture probabilities among sites and for inter-annual variability in survival, our results generally showed that equipping swifts with geolocators decreased their survival prospects, but also that the magnitude of this effect may depend on species-specific traits. These conclusions are in line with those of other studies on aerial foragers. We suggest that future studies tracking the movements of aerial insectivorous birds should use devices designed to minimize drag.


Gastroretentive floating drug delivery systems (GFD DS) of atenolol, an antihypertensive drug, with an oral bioavailability of only 50% (because of its poor absorption from lower gastrointestinal tract) have been designed and optimized using 3≤ full factorial design. Hydroxypropyl methyl cell ulose of different viscosity grades (K4M and 50 cps) were used as the polymers and sodium bicarbonate as gas generating agent to reduce floatin g lag time. The tablets were prepared by direct compression method. Estimation of atenolol in the p repared tablet formulations was carried out by extracting the drug with methanol and measuring the absorbance at 225.3 nm. The prepared formulations were further evaluated fo r hardness, friability, weight variation, drug content uniformity, swelling index, in vitro drug release pattern, short-term stability and drug excipient in teractions. Majority of the designed formulations displayed nearly first order release k ientics, releasing more than 80% drug in 10 hours and remained buoyan than 24 hours. The optimized formulation containing atenolol 50 mg, HPMC (50 cps) 100 mg and sodium bicarbonate 30 mg has displayed almost zero order r elease kinetics with a floating lag time of only 2.9 minutes. This formulation released more than 90% drug in 9 hours. This study proves that GFDDS of atenolol can be designed using HPMC 50 cps as matrix polymer, which provides nearly zero order release kinetics and thus possible enhancement of oral bioavailability of the drug.


One of the most important scholars of modern Hellenism during the 18th century was the famous monk from Xeropetamou monastery, Caesarius, known as Constantine Dapontes (1713-1784), a personality with rich literary work, and considerable activity related to the renovation of the Xeropotamou monastery. In addition to its known comprehensive and independent works, there are also many shorter writings –corrections and personal notes– scattered around in manuscripts and books. The recent publication of The Supplementary Catalogue of Greek Manuscripts of the Xeropotamou Monastery, Mount Athos (426-557) (authored by monk Zacharias Xeropotaminos and P. Sotiroudis, of the Centre for Byzantine Research of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki 2012), brought to light two such texts: a) A small unsigned note in f. 12r at the manuscript 448 (Table 1), within the written text, above the synaxarion of the neomartyr saint Nicholas Karpenisiotis, stating that the skull of the martyr is at the Xeropotamou Monastery. By comparison of the writing characteristics and style of the unsigned text, the authors have no doubt that is coming from the hand of the monk Caesarius Dapontes. b) The second  text  attributed to Caesarius Dapontes is also unsigned and was  found  in ff. 6r-7r of  the manuscript 494 (year 1635/6) (Table 2). It is entitled «Πeρί  τῆς ἡμeτέρας  σeβασμίας και βασιλικῆς μονῆς τοῦ Ξηροποτάμου, παρά τίνων κτητόρων ἐκτίσθη», it is written in prose and it has replaced an existing text of the same context. We are very close to the truth , if we assume that in Barsky was known the text undone, from which it seems natural to use many elements the Dapontes too as evidenced by the several phraseological similarities. The text, that is issued here, has been copied by Sp. Lambros and published in the journal Neos Hellinomnimon 18 (1924) pp. 354-357 with the comment: "It does not seem to be autographed by the deceased Dapontes. The copyist". Hence the hitherto modern research cites this brief story of Dapontes as anonymous. However, the comparative examination of the handwriting characteristics and style, leaves no doubt that it comes from the hand of the scholar monk from Xeropotamou Monastry, and it is estimated that it has been composed at around 1770.


This paper develops and tests several models of pure Nash strategies of individuals who extract from a common pool resource when they are motivated by a combination of self-interest and other motivations such as altruism, reciprocity, inequity aversion and conformism. We test whether an econometric summary of subjects' strategies is consistent with one of these motivations using data from a series of common pool resource experiments conducted in three regions of Colombia. As expected, average extraction levels are less than that predicted by a model of pure self-interest, but are nevertheless sub-optimal. Moreover, we find that a model of conformism with monotonically increasing best response functions best describes average strategies. Our empirical results are inconsistent with models of altruism, reciprocity and inequity aversion.


A linear parameter-varying controller synthesis procedure is developed for the asymptotic rejection of non-stationary infinite-energy disturbances generated by a parameter-dependent exo-system, while also guaranteeing a specified level of performance measured in terms of the worst- case energy amplification from a finite-energy disturbance to a performance output. The asymptotic regulation objective is achievable if a parameter-dependent system of differential algebraic equations admits bounded solutions for all possible parameter variations, which can be investigated by robust stability analysis techniques. Based on uniform bounds on the solutions, a suitable Lyapunov matrix can be constructed beforehand to achieve the additional performance objective by online scheduling, through LMI optimization, of a controller that accompanies a replica of the exo-system scheduled suitably via the solution of the differential algebraic regulator equations.


We present a climatology of cross-tropopause air mass exchange on isentropic surfaces in the middle world based on a Lagrangian framework. One-month isentropic trajectories are computed for 8 years from 1992 to 1999 using the United Kingdom Meteorological Office assimilated data set. This study provides seasonal and interannual variations of isentropic mass transport between the lowermost stratosphere and the troposphere. The spatial distribution of the exchange is investigated to infer the primary mechanism for the exchange. The climatology of the stratosphere-troposphere exchange exhibits a prominent annual cycle of two-way exchange. The largest downward flux of stratospheric air to the troposphere occurs in late spring to summer in both hemispheres. The smallest downward flux of stratospheric air into the troposphere occurs during the fall season in both hemispheres. For the upward flux of tropospheric air to the stratosphere, the greatest transport appears in fall and winter, and the smallest appears in summer, in both hemispheres. The preferred routes for downward transport in both hemispheres correspond to the regions with the highest frequency of Rossby wave-breaking events and with the storm tracks along the jets, implying that tropopause folding and baroclinic eddy activity are responsible for the gross horizontal distribution. A notable interannual variation is the existence of much stronger flux of stratosphere-to-troposphere transport in the northern winter during the period 1996-1999 than during the period 1992-1995. Increased medium-scale wave activity is the likely explanation for this interannual variability. An observed increase in the northern midlatitude total column ozone in 1998 winter/spring may arise partly from the decreased upward transport of ozone-poor tropospheric air.


Many people think of technology and science as being super-cultural, not tied to any particular country or culture. Observations in the field of electronic music in Beijing show that Western technology carries, built into it, ideas that constrain the activity of its Chinese users. Everytime a Chinese musician plays or composes a piece, it is as if a virtual Westerner is collaborating with him. The French essayist Paul Virilio wrote that technology is about increasing speed and reducing distance, and worn us that these advances come at a price. Chinese musicians, through their use of Western technology, can play faster (do a gig after only a few months of practice with the built-in presets of a synthesizer, or just press the 'play' button of a turntable and they have music). The price to pay for this rapid innovation, however, is that the music is not clearly Chinese anymore. The only way to go faster with culture is to use other people's work. Since the invention of recording one can say that foreign musicians are 'performing' everyday in China. A similar relation can be observed with most Western technological objects in the PRC; a SMS written on a Motorola mobile phone uses Western punctuation marks, while the same content written on a Nokia will have Chinese punctuation marks; part of the content of the message is imposed by the producer of the technology.


Background Low birth weight (LBW) is a risk factor for adult essential hypertension, diabetes mellitus, obesity and cardiovascular disease mortality in later life. Individuals with history of LBW have many abnormalities in their blood vessels including a reduction in microvascular density or rarefaction. Capillary rarefaction (CR) is a hallmark of essential hypertension and evidence suggests that CR is a primary structural abnormality that precedes the onset of the rise in blood pressure (BP) as it is found in normotensive individuals at high risk of developing hypertension. We recently found that LBW infants have higher and not lower capillary density at birth. We hypothesised that LBW infants will undergo significant CR in early life triggered or exaggerated by oxygen therapy. Methods We studied 26 LBW infants and 14 normal birth weight infants (NBW) as controls. Of the LBW infants, only 10 received oxygen therapy. We used a handheld video capillaroscopy system (HVCS) to measure functional or basal (BCD) and structural or maximal capillary density (MCD) on day 1, 5, and 10, and after 40 weeks adjusted for the gestational age in preterm LBW infants. Blood pressure was measured at each visit using Welch Allyn VSMTM 300 monitor. Results At birth, the NBW infants had significantly lower BCD (difference −9.3 cap/area, 95% CI: −1.5 to −17.1, p=0.021) and MCD (difference −12.6 cap/area, 95% CI: −1.5 to −21.7, p=0.025) compared to the LBW infants. LBW oxygen group had a significantly lower SBP (mean difference −9.5 mmHg, 95% CI: −1 to −19, p=0.047), DBP (difference −13 mmHg, 95% CI: −4 to −22, p=0.009). At 40 weeks old, the LBW oxygen group showed a significant reduction in BCD (difference −19.3 cap/area, 95% CI: −9 to −30, p=0.003) and MCD (difference −22 cap/area, 95% CI: −8 to −36 p=0.007). Similarly the LBW non-oxygen group had a significant reduction in BCD (difference −29 cap/area, 95% CI −17 to −41 p<0.0001) and MCD (mean difference −29 cap/area, 95% CI, −16 to −41 p<0.001). Both LBW groups showed a significant rise in BP. The rise in SBP (mean difference 24 mmHg, 95% CI: 14–34, p<0.0001) and DBP (mean difference 14 mmHg, 95% CI: 7–22, p<0.001) was more pronounced in LBW oxygen group compared to the LBW control group (difference 14 mmHg, 95% CI: 0.5–27, p=0.043 and difference 9 mmHg, 0.3–19, p=0.056 respectively) Conclusions We confirm that LBW infants have higher capillary density at birth but develop significant capillary rarefaction and increase in their blood pressure at 40 weeks compared to NBW infants. Oxygen therapy in the neonatal period in LBW infants was associated with higher blood pressure levels but we could not detect any effect on capillary rarefaction. Further studies are needed to investigate the humoral factors that trigger the changes of microcirculation in LBW infants during the neonatal period which may be of importance in preventing hypertension in later life.


The circulation in the Levantine Eastern Mediterranean basin is characterized by a complex system of sub-basin and mesoscale features. The most predominant and persistent eddy is an anticyclonic feature located south of Cyprus and identified as the Cyprus Eddy (CE). Previous studies based on in-situ data, satellite and model outputs confirm the presence of this warm core eddy centered around 33°E, 33.5°N. Although the center of the CE might be found slightly shifted to the west /east for different years of analysis, the anticyclonic eddy appears always above the Eratosthenes seamount whose peak lies at the depth of ~ 690 m and it rises ~ 2500 m above the surrounding seafloor. The presence of a cyclonic and anticyclonic eddy named South Shikmona (SSE) and North Shikmona (NSE) eddy, respectively has been also detected east of the CE and west of the Lebanese and Israeli coasts. Here, we present a hypothesis that attempts to explain the formation mechanism of the three eddies described above. Specifically, for an eastward stratified current on a b plane, the isolated seamount forces a Taylor column above it which can be identified as the CE. A standing wake downstream is also formed, and embedded eddies are associated with the SSE and NSE. These sub-basin features are probably part of a Rossby wave system. The analytical model of McCartney 1976 supports this hypothesis. Reanalysis and sea glider data collected during the CINEL project sponsored by the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR) are used to investigate McCartney’s solution. Preliminary results confirm the presence of a series of eddies above and downstream the sea mountain supporting therefore, the advanced hypothesis.


In the era of experience economy, how best to deliver memorable and exciting customer experiences has become a key issue for service providers, and customers can involve themselves in service experience delivery by actively deciding appropriate services rather than passively accepting existing ones. However, service providers frequently consider profit and cost first despite knowing that high-quality service can maximize satisfaction. A dilemma emerges particularly in the oligopoly market. Oligopoly service providers generally have no need to expend additional efforts and costs in attracting customers, and thus are considered a value-bounded context for customers in which providers only provide customers with existing services and restricted values. Accordingly, this study devises an interaction design mechanism to assist oligopoly service providers in effectively managing customer expectations within the dynamic interactions even in value-bounded contexts. The proposed mechanism models this interaction design problem as a series of Hawk-Dove games toward an evolutionary stable state. The simulation results suggest that oligopoly service providers should change their original mindset and design the interactions to manage customer expectations within the service experience delivery to not only achieve high satisfaction and profit but also engage customers to co-create the values.


We address the problem of joint downlink beamforming in a power-controlled network, where independent data streams are to be transmitted from a multiantenna base station to several decentralized single-antenna terminals. The total transmit power is limited and channel information (possibly statistical) is available at the transmitter. The design goal: jointly adjust the beamformers and transmission powers according to individual SINR requirements. In this context, there are two closely related optimization problems. P1: maximize the jointly achievable SINR margin under a total power constraint. P2: minimize the total transmission power while satisfying a set of SINR constraints. In this paper, both problems are solved within a unified analytical framework. Problem P1 is solved by minimizing the maximal eigenvalue of an extended crosstalk matrix. The solution provides a necessary and sufficient condition for the feasibility of the SINR requirements. Problem P2 is a variation of problem P1. An important step in our analysis is to show that the global optimum of the downlink beamforming problem is equivalently obtained from solving a dual uplink problem, which has an easier-to-handle analytical structure. Then, we make use of the special structure of the extended crosstalk matrix to develop a rapidly converging iterative algorithm. The optimality and global convergence of the algorithm is proven and stopping criteria are given.


Blockchain is a distributed ledger that gained a prevalent attention in many areas. Many industries have started to implement blockchain solutions for their application and services. It is important to know the key components, functional characteristics, and architecture of blockchain to understand its impact and applicability to various applications. The most well-known use case of blockchain is bitcoin: a cryptocurrency. Being a distributed ledger, consensus mechanism is needed among peer nodes of a blockchain network to ensure its proper working. Many consensus algorithms have been proposed in literature each having its own performance and security characteristics. One consensus algorithm cannot serve the requirements of every application. It is vital to technically compare the available consensus algorithms to highlight their strengths, weaknesses, and use cases. We have identified and discussed parameters related to performance and security of consensus in blockchain. The consensus algorithms are analyzed and compared with respect to these parameters. Research gap regarding designing an efficient consensus algorithm and evaluating existing algorithms is presented. This paper will act as a guide for developers and researchers to evaluate and design a consensus algorithm.


Virtual face beautification (or markup) becomes common operations in camera or image processing Apps, which is actually deceiving. In this paper, we propose the task of restoring a portrait image from this process. As the first attempt along this line, we assume unknown global operations on human faces and aim to tackle the two issues of skin smoothing and skin color change. These two tasks, intriguingly, impose very different difficulties to estimate subtle details and major color variation. We propose a Component Regression Network (CRN) and address the limitation of using Euclidean loss in blind reversion. CRN maps the edited portrait images back to the original ones without knowing beautification operation details. Our experiments demonstrate effectiveness of the system for this novel task.


Digital Humanities offer a new exciting domain for agent-based distributed simulation. In historical studies interpretation rarely rises above the level of unproven assertion and is rarely tested against a range of evidence. Agent-based simulation can provide an opportunity to break these cycles of academic claim and counterclaim. The MWGrid framework utilises distributed agent based simulation to study medieval military logistics. As a use-case, it has focused on the logistical analysis of the Byzantine army's march to the battle of Manzikert (AD 1071), a key event in medieval history. It integrates an agent design template, a transparent, layered mechanism to translate model-level agents' actions to time stamped events and the PDES-MAS distributed simulation kernel. The paper presents an overview of the MWGrid system and a quantitative evaluation of its performance.


Normal 0 false false false No continent has as high a proportion of older people as Europe. In this paper, we report the findings of an empirical project examining the legal advice needs of older people. An important element of the project also sought information about the capacity of the internet for meeting the legal advice needs of older people. Overall our findings broadly indicate considerable failings in legal information provision for older people from more traditional advice sources. Whilst we have uncovered some examples of individualised good practice,our research in the main revealed an alarming sense of fear, mistrust, uncertainty and ambivalence among older people towards accessing legal advice. The research was funded by the Changing Ageing Partnership (CAP). We believe our findings have broad implications and applicability across Europe.


The hypothesis to be tested was that the microbiota and resulting local host inflammatory response characteristics in oral conditions of high levels of chronic gingival inflammation increases susceptibility to progressing periodontitis. This study used cynomolgus monkeys, Macaca fascicularis (nonhuman primates), with high and low levels of long-standing gingival inflammation to define the profiles of gingival crevicular fluid mediators, cytokines and immunoglobulins; describe the subgingival microbiota; and evaluate their susceptibility to ligature-induced periodontitis. Sixteen nonhuman primates were stratified into two groups (HI, LO) based upon Bleeding Index as a measure of the natural level of inflammation (HI = 1.26 +/- 0.45; LO = 0.22 +/- 0.16). The host mediator levels, subgingival microbiota, and clinical characteristics of the LO and HI groups were compared after 30 days of oral hygiene, during a 30 day experimental gingivitis (7, 14, and 30 days), and during periodontitis (30, 60, and 90 days). The results demonstrated that nonhuman primates with high levels of long-standing gingival inflammation when compared to those nonhuman primates with low inflammation show: 1) different inflammatory mediator profiles in gingival crevicular fluid (particularly for immunoglobulin A (IgA) and IgG levels), 2) a different quantitative and qualitative subgingival microbiota; and 3) a similar progression of periodontitis. Thus, while variations in host inflammatory responses to local factors exist in the nonhuman primates, an extensive subgingival challenge (such as ligation) may negate these individual differences.


By Dr. Peter Kagwanja ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The African Union has been acclaimed for its leadership role and engagement in addressing the Darfur crisis. International consensus is almost emerging in favor of substantial increase of the presence of the African Union Mission in Darfur, including expansion of the size of its monitoring force and a clear mandate for its troops to protect civilians. Rapid expansion of the African Union mission requires a corresponding increase in its peace-keeping capacity through provision of equipment, logistical, financial, material, and other resources. Confidence in the AU's ability to change the course of events in Darfur partly stems from fact that it has managed to overcome some of the constraints that paralyzed the Organization of African Unity (OAU) that it replaced in 2001. The AU has responded proactively to today's worst humanitarian crisis, unlike the OAU that stood by with the rest of the international community and watched as the 1994 genocide in Rwanda unfolded. By taking bold steps to stop fighting and stem the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, the African Union has raised its profile, but the crisis has also presented the first real test for its viability as a credible force in peace-keeping in Africa. Indeed, Darfur has become the crucible for the African Union's future role in peace-keeping.


Emergency care physicians are at the forefront of receiving patients in conditions of widespread flooding such as what happened when Typhoon Ondoy poured heavy rain on September 26, 2009 and brought the worst rainfall to Metro Manila among recorded typhoons according to PAGASA (Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical, and Astronomical Services Administration). Luzon was declared in a state of calamity. Flood water levels reached a record 20 feet high in rural areas. More than 2,089 people have been treated for bacterial infection in Manila and surrounding provinces and 162 people have died, more than five times the number of Leptospirosis deaths in the entire country in 2008. This study is a chart review of the clinical outcome of admitted patients diagnosed with Leptospirosis during Typhoon Ondoy from October to November 2009. This covered those patients' charts designated under the ICD (International Classification of Disease) A27 and showed their clinical outcome based on the following predictors such as age, gender, duration of hospitalization, presence or absence of complications particularly bleeding diathesis, renal failure, cardiac, neurologic and muscular complications on admission. The majority of mortalities is associated with bleeding diathesis. Cardiac involvement is common but may be underestimated. Having in mind the complications of Leptospirosis and predictors of mortality, early detection and intervention, interim guidelines on management and public health measures can respond better to expected cases especially during an epidemic/disaster.


In this paper, we propose the use of lustering methods for automatic counting of pedestrians in video sequences. As input, we consider the output of those detection/tracking systems that overestimate the number of targets. Clustering techniques are applied to the resulting trajectories in order to reduce the bias between the number of tracks and the real number of targets. The main hypothesis is that those trajectories belonging to the same human body are more similar than trajectories belonging to different individuals. Several data representations and different distance/similarity measures are proposed and compared, under a common hierarchical clustering framework, and both quantitative and qualitative results are presented


In this paper we seek to answer the following question: How complete is the Swespineregister? In order to answer this question we believe that in a register that has the ambitionto follow-up patients throughout a specified period of time, two types of completeness haveto be defined: external and internal completeness. In our opinion, the correct assessment ofa register's level of completeness, results in an increase in its credibility, revealing whetherthe register has met its desired level of quality.By defining the register's target population we came to the conclusion that the methodused by Swespine to calculate external completeness yielded misleading results. We definedanother method of assessing external completeness and concluded that our questioncannot be answered.We have also found an appropriate way to calculate the register's internal completenesslevel. Since the internal completeness decreases as the follow-up period increases, wesought to discover which groups of patients are more likely to respond to the follow-upquestionnaire. For this a Logistic Regression Method was applied.


Abstract The article considers traditional and non-traditional security concerns faced by the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the face of China's increasing presence. Consequently the article first considers the geo-economic challenges posed to these Baltic States through the China and Central and East Europe Countries (CCEEC) grouping, and China's Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) initiative. This economic leverage translates to political leverage able to be exerted on the Baltic states by China, with regard to human rights and the issue of the Dalai Lama. Moreover, such mechanisms and Chinese financing serves to politically divide the Baltic states, and also divides EU solidarity vis-à-vis China. Finally there are the conventional security issues posed to the Baltic states in the Russia-China naval exercises carried out in Baltic waters in 2017; with China's role in effect providing implicit support and legitimisation of explicit Russian threats in the Baltic. It concludes by suggesting alternative infrastructure routings to at least reduce the threat of Russian interference.


There is often seen in the literature a disconnect between higher-level artificial intelligence and lower-level controls research. Too often, path planners do not account for the physical capabilities of the agents that will be following their paths. Similarly, the best controllers available need to be given trajectories from somewhere. This work presents a combined architecture that links a high-level cognitive model, which can handle symbolic information and make rational decisions using it, with a lower-level optimal controller for planning detailed robotic vehicle trajectories. The priorities of the cognitive model are passed to the controller in the form of a set of weights that vary the importance of terms in a cost functional. Using the calculus of variations, this cost functional is combined with the physical system dynamics and globally optimized, resulting in a full-state trajectory that is optimal with respect to the agent's strategic goals and physical capabilities.


Speech-language pathology (SLP) graduate programs offer coursework and clinical training experiences for a wide variety of communication disorder areas. Voice disorders are one area in which many practicing clinicians, particularly school-based practicing clinicians, reportedly feel a lack of professional competency. Many SLP graduate programs offer only limited coursework in voice disorders and limited or no clinical practicum experiences prior to degree completion. The purpose of the present study was to compare the self-perceptions of 45 graduate students majoring in speech-language pathology at the beginning and end of a 3-credit voice disorders course. The Voice Disorders Competency Checklist (Teten, DeVeney, Friehe, 2013) was used as the pre-/post-measurement tool. As anticipated, students reported a higher level of competency following course completion. These self-reported perceptions were seen for the three clusters of knowledge: prevention, assessment, and intervention. Statistical differences were noted between growth in the 'prevention' and the 'assessment' clusters. Directions for future research and practical implications are discussed.


This paper introduces supervised contrastive active learning (SCAL) by leveraging the contrastive loss for active learning in a supervised setting. We propose efficient query strategies in active learning to select unbiased and informative data samples of diverse feature representations. We demonstrate our proposed method reduces sampling bias, achieves state-of-the-art accuracy and model calibration in an active learning setup with the query computation 11x faster than CoreSet and 26x faster than Bayesian active learning by disagreement. Our method yields well-calibrated models even with imbalanced datasets. We also evaluate robustness to dataset shift and out-of-distribution in active learning setup and demonstrate our proposed SCAL method outperforms high performing compute-intensive methods by a bigger margin (average 8.9% higher AUROC for out-of-distribution detection and average 7.2% lower ECE under dataset shift).


SIR: The recent article by Dr Rainsford and Dr Brune (Journal, June 5) presents the hypothesis that the parietal cell is the major site of damage after peroral aspirin. The authors cite a number of studies which support this hypothesis, but unfortunately ignore other studies which do not. For instance, aspirin-induced erosions do develop in the non acid-secreting antral mucosa, both in the experimental animal and man.' 2 3 Also, Hingson and Ito have found that the initial damage (assessed by electron microscopy) involves the surface mucous cells, not the parietal cells." A further criticism is that the authors leap from their as yet unproven hypothesis to a recommendation for clinical practice-r-that aspirin "should not be taken on an empty stomach". Gastric acid is undoubtedly important in the pathogenesis of aspirin-induced erosions. 5 Even so, predictions about the effects of food on the extent of aspirin damage must take into consideration several factors including: (i) alterations in the rate of gastric emptying; (ii) buffering by food; and (iii) stimulation of gastric acid secretion by food. Indeed, in a recent symposium in Canberra, Leonards suggested that aspirin might cause more damage if taken soon after meals." While direct information about the effects of food on aspirin damage is difficult to obtain in man, indirect evidence (provided by measurement of faecal blood loss after aspirin ingestion) is available. Aspirininduced blood loss has been found to be the same, irrespective of whether the drug is administered before meals or with milk or food. 7 8 Therefore, at present, the recommendation to avoid aspirin "on an empty stomach" cannot be justified.


ABSTRACT Helicobacter pylori causes disease in the human stomach and in mouse and gerbil stomach models. Previous results have shown that motility is critical for H. pylori to colonize mice, gerbils, and other animal models. The role of chemotaxis, however, in colonization and disease is less well understood. Two genes in the H. pylori chemotaxis pathway, cheY and tlpB, which encode the chemotaxis response regulator and a methyl-accepting chemoreceptor, respectively, were disrupted. The cheY mutation was complemented with a wild-type copy of cheY inserted into the chromosomal rdxA gene. The cheY mutant lost chemotaxis but retained motility, while all other strains were motile and chemotactic in vitro. These strains were inoculated into gerbils either alone or in combination with the wild-type strain, and colonization and inflammation were assessed. While the cheY mutant completely failed to colonize gerbil stomachs, the tlpB mutant colonized at levels similar to those of the wild type. With the tlpB mutant, there was a substantial decrease in inflammation in the gerbil stomach compared to that with the wild type. Furthermore, there were differences in the numbers of each immune cell in the tlpB-mutant-infected stomach: the ratio of lymphocytes to neutrophils was about 8 to 1 in the wild type but only about 1 to 1 in the mutant. These results suggest that the TlpB chemoreceptor plays an important role in the inflammatory response while the CheY chemotaxis regulator plays a critical role in initial colonization. Chemotaxis mutants may provide new insights into the steps involved in H. pylori pathogenesis.


The process of discovering the relationship between objects and events, and understanding their proportion will lead to the production of meaning. During the process of making architecture as a type of art, beauty is created. When a man confronts a beautiful opus, he can perceive the rules of its production by reviewing and re-analyzing that opus. In this research, there is a beautiful architecture opus built by the people of District 17 of Tehran Municipality. District 17 in Tehran, is a district with large number of immigrants with deterioration as the most important physical feature is depreciation and in the not too distant past. Poverty is considered as an integral part of people's lives in district 17. Residential buildings of district 17 Tehran, which have been chosen by the people as beautiful opus during a photography contest is the discussed topic in this article. The first step is to discover what people consider as beautiful and the second step is to achieve the legitimacy of the intended "aesthetics". The analysis method is based on deduction of common points in sample analysis. In order to understand and interpret the qualitative phenomena in a number of selected buildings by the public, the quantitative methods are used. The examined quantitative parameters include shapes and proportions, colors, materials, decorations, age and style of the building facades. Analysis of the achievements of quantitative parameter analysis shows a clear desire of the people to change the subjective experience of poverty in the past and to show a kind of well-being in their lives according to recent events such as the increase of land and housing cost, as well as the expansion of Tehran, population growth and the location of district 17 within the context of Tehran. Many tend to use stone on the facade; the rise of Western classical face lifting that has been seen in the north of the city before. New sequencing and beauty in the minds of the residents and use of attention-seeking colors, shows that people desire to discriminate and change the social class.


Where approved, producers have adopted genetically modified (GM) crops extensively. Yet, areas not adopting GM crops account for large shares of production and consumption. GM crops differ from previous agricultural innovations because consumers may perceive them as fundamentally different from (and potentially inferior to) conventionally grown crops. Many countries maintain restrictions on production and importation of GM crops. GM crop adoption affects producers and consumers, not only through technological change, but also through trade policy responses. This article reviews open economy analyses of impacts of GM crops. To varying degrees, commodities are segmented into GM, conventionally grown, and organic product markets. Recent advances in trade modeling consider the consequences of market segmentation, along with consequences of GM crop import restrictions, product segregation requirements, and coexistence policies.


This paper presents three models of Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) modem operating at data rate of 16.8kb/s to be transmitted over 32kb/s Adaptive Differential Pulse Code Modulation (ADPCM) channel. These modems operate at symbol rates of 2400, 2800, and 3360 baud with associated number of bits per symbol of 7, 6, and 5 respectively. The performance of ADPCM is studied considering these modems with different constellations. The simulation results show that the performance of ADPCM degrades as the symbol rate decreases or number of bits per symbol increases.   Also, the performance with circular constellation is better than rectangular one.