Ubiquitous computing technologies have traditionally striven to augment objects and the environment with sensing capabilities to enable them to respond appropriately to the needs of the individuals in the environment. This paper considers how such technologies might be harnessed to support language learning, and specifically Task-Based Learning (TBL). Task-Based Learning (TBL) involves doing meaningful tasks in a foreign language, emphasising the language's use in practice. TBL is seen as a highly engaging and motivating approach to learning a language, but is difficult to do in the classroom. Here, learners typically engage in activities that only simulate 'real-world' tasks, and as such only rehearse language use, rather than applying the language in practice. In this paper, we explore how an instrumented, context-aware environment whose design is grounded in pedagogical principles can support TBL. We present the French Kitchen, an instrumented kitchen for English speakers who are learning French, and describe a 46-participant evaluation of the kitchen. Based on the evaluation, we provide a set of design recommendations for those building instrumented systems for TBL.


By Rex Black, President, RBCS, Inc. Testing any real-world system is potentially an infinite task. Of this infinite set of possible tests, test managers need to focus on the most significant risks to system quality. These are the potential failures that are likely to occur in real-world use or would cost a lot if they did occur. This article describes practical ways to analyze the risks to system quality, providing guidance along the way to achieving effective and efficient testing.


Economists claim that the current economic malaise comes as a direct result of the volatility in today's global economy and the increasing on set of nationwide austerity measures (EIBTM 2012). Despite this, Davidson (2012) argues that the global events sector can still look forward to another period of moderate expansion in meetings, events and business travel volume and spending in 2013. Technology has evolved rapidly in a manner that supplies event businesses, venues and planners with novel resolutions to facilitate them need to work more efficiently at all stages in the planning lifecycle (Davidson 2011). With the significant rise of social media event attendees have engaged willingly in these platforms. Furthermore, the growing trend of social media has compelled event planners to re-think how to organise and market events effectively and consider how social media should be integrated into an event strategy. Shang et al (2011) highlighted that businesses need to have a good understanding of the information shared on social media and how to manage it for the business to remain competitive and sustainable. However, information on the implementation of social media within event businesses is in limited supply in academic literature. Therefore the purpose of this paper is to provide essential knowledge to current and potential events businesses in order to gain competitive advantage and sustain a successful events business model. It will review event marketing literature, explore the features of contemporary event marketing with a primary focus on social media and Web 2.0 technologies and evaluate their role within an integrated marketing strategy toward securing a sustainable business model for events companies. The research was qualitative in nature, with the main data collection methods being in-depth interviews and focus groups. Focus groups enabled the researcher to observe and comprehend the context within which decisions and action occur mirroring the activities of social media where decisions and actions are taken after posts or comments have been made. Findings suggest that event planners are using social media at all stages of the event planning process: for promotion, awareness, engagement and feedback. It was evident that it is still a new tool within the industry and that many event planners have not fully embraced all of its features. However, interaction and engagement with event attendees is a particular element of social media that event planners are embracing to gain the trust of their consumers and secure audiences strategically. Bolan et. al (2012) emphasised that events revolve around communication and interaction and that social media is an essential element of successful event business models. The research also highlighted that social media enabled planners to promote and market events to thousands of people in seconds before, during and after the event and also more interestingly to non- attendees. The research recommends that event businesses embrace new technologies such as social media, become fully literate in their features and engage with event attendees at all stages of the event planning process toward securing a sustainable events business model for 2013 and beyond.


This paper examined for the first time the possibilities of the usage of the cathodically pretreated borondoped diamond (CPT-BDD) electrode for the redox behavior of salbutamol (SAL) using cyclic and adsorptive stripping voltammetry. The cyclic voltammograms showed an irreversible and adsorption-controlled oxidation peak at about +1.0 V in the Britton-Robinson (BR) buffer (pH 9.0) solution. Under the optimized experimental condition, using squarewave adsorptive stripping mode, the compound yielded a well-defined voltammetric response in BR buffer, pH 9.0 at +0.95 V (vs. Ag/AgCl) (after 30 s accumulation at an open circuit condition). A linear calibration graph was obtained in the concentration range of 4.15 to 83 μg mL-1 (1.73x10-5 -3.47x10-4 M). A detection limit of 1.21 μg mL-1 (5.06x10-6 M) was observed. The suggested method was also applied to the determination of SAL in the drug formulations.


The high sensitivity in response, selectivity and reversibility was achieved on a carbon nanowall-based sensor for the vapor detection of volatile organic compounds, which were tested by an electrical resistance method during adsorption and desorption cycles. The maze-like structure of two different carbon nanowalls with wall-to-wall distances of 100 nm and 300 nm were prepared on a silicone substrate by a plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition system while varying processing parameters. Four organic vapors: iso-pentane; diethyl ether; acetone; and methanol; were selected in order to evaluate the relationship between the change in resistance, molecular weight of the adsorbent and the polarity. The results show that the carbon nanowalls with average wall distance 100 nm exhibit substantially enhanced electrical response to all volatile organic compound vapors used in comparison with the nanowalls with 300 nm wall distance as well as entangled multiwall carbon nanotube networks.


This classic and controversial volume provides extensive coverage of slave resistance and revolt in Jamaica. This new reissue is now available worldwide. Hart's coverage of the slave rebellions and revolts in Jamaica documents that slavery did not eradicate the intellectual and creative powers of slaves; in fact, a great deal survived and was created by the slaves themselves. Hart avoids polemics and his most important point is that the Jamaican rebels forced the British government to reset the agenda for emancipation and the slaves gained their freedom sooner than anticipated. The work is an in-depth accessible study of the Maroon Wars and of the many slave revolts that were a standard feature of the Jamaican struggle against slavery. Hart pulls the veil from an aspect of West Indian history that has been largely ignored - if not consciously suppressed - the slaves' own struggles to abolish slavery. This culmination of his life work and this long-awaited reprint is now widely available to a new generation of students and researchers.


Learning a generalized prior for natural image restoration is an important yet challenging task. Early methods mostly involved handcrafted priors including normalized sparsity, l_0 gradients, dark channel priors, etc. Recently, deep neural networks have been used to learn various image priors but do not guarantee to generalize. In this paper, we propose a novel approach that embeds a task-agnostic prior into a transformer. Our approach, named Task-Agnostic Prior Embedding (TAPE), consists of two stages, namely, task-agnostic pre-training and task-specific fine-tuning, where the first stage embeds prior knowledge about natural images into the transformer and the second stage extracts the knowledge to assist downstream image restoration. Experiments on various types of degradation validate the effectiveness of TAPE. The image restoration performance in terms of PSNR is improved by as much as 1.45dB and even outperforms task-specific algorithms. More importantly, TAPE shows the ability of disentangling generalized image priors from degraded images, which enjoys favorable transfer ability to unknown downstream tasks.


In this work, we give an overview of the INTEGRAL archival activities performed at INAF-IASF Milano, along with highlights of the scientific results obtained on High Mass X-ray Binaries.
A few years after the launch of INTEGRAL, in order to increment and ease the exploitation of the data at INAF-IASF Milano, we prepared and maintained an INTEGRAL archive named 'GOLIA'. This gave us full control over what was being done and how, and enabled unexpected discoveries and systematic studies, stimulating new investigations and collaborations. Indeed, GOLIA allowed us to discover the (currently only) outburst periodicity from a Supergiant Fast X-ray Transient: IGRJ11215-5952. Starting from this discovery, and thanks to the population study approach offered by such an archive, we undertook a journey to understand Supergiant Fast X-ray Transients within the wider scenario of High Mass X-ray Binaries, tackling several long-term aspects: cumulative luminosity distributions, energy and temporal properties of bright flares, large-scale wind structures.
Given the very productive outcome of such an approach, we decided to build a second generation archive in IASF Milano, named ANITA (A New InTegral Archive), with improved hardware and software performances.


The adjustment for the firm capital structure is unclear from perspectives of trade-off theory, pecking order theory, life cycle theory, market timing theory, and free cash flow theory, since many research findings contradict each other. Adjustments for the capital structure are complex, since the conditions for each firm are different. The objective of this study is to provide empirical evidence of how firms adjust capital structure in relationship with maturity in context of trade-off, pecking order, free cash flow, and market timing theory. In terms of hypotheses testing, this study conducts logistic regression analysis with 138 Indonesian public firms as the sample in the observed period from 2010 to 2015. To distinguish the results, this study controls the sample by size and age based on the median. The study reports that preferences for the source of funds based on the cost of capital, internal conflict, and firm maturity indicate adjustments for the firm capital structure. Based on Indonesian firms, the form of capital structure in developing countries can refer to a single model or a combination of the trade-off model and pecking order model, as well as market timing. Winston Pontoh (Indonesia), Novi Swandari Budiarso (Indonesia) BUSINESS PERSPECTIVES LLC "СPС "Business Perspectives" Hryhorii Skovoroda lane, 10, Sumy, 40022, Ukraine www.businessperspectives.org Firm characteristics and capital structure


Cellular proliferation and differentiation are critical events in normal development and cancer. Despite decades of research, much remains to be learned about how cells transition between the two states. To decipher one aspect of this switch, we focused on the transcription factor, Hepatocyte Nuclear Factor (HNF) 4 alpha. HNF4a is a nuclear receptor that is important in development and in maintaining the homoeostasis of the adult liver and colon. There are multiple isoforms of the HNF4a that are generated by alterative promoter (P1 and P2) usage and 3' splicing events in different tissues. Both P1 and P2-HNF4a isoforms are expressed in the adult colon, while the P1-HNF4a is expressed in the adult liver. Others have shown that P1-HNF4a is downregulated in cancer, whereas P2-HNF4a is upregulated in hepatocellular carcinoma and colorectal cancer. This would suggest that P1-HNF4a is tumor suppressive, while P2-HNF4a may act as an oncogene although a mechanism has not been elucidated. One potential mechanism could be through a differential interplay with the Wnt/beta-catenin/TCF pathway, which is activated in many cancers including liver and colon. To determine whether HNF4a and TCF4 cross-talk to control the switch between proliferation and differentiation and to elucidate the role of the HNF4a isoforms in early development and cancer, we generated Tet-On inducible systems that express either HNF4a2 (P1) or HNF4a8 (P2) under the control of doxycycline in human colon cancer and mouse embryonic stem cells. We characterized the lines to look for morphological and functional differences between the isoforms. We performed RNA-Seq and ChIP-Seq on the HCT116 inducible lines to identify any changes in gene expression and regulation and compared the HNF4a2 and HNF4a8 lines to determine functional differences. Although we found some functional redundancy, there are discrete differences. HNF4a2 suppresses tumor growth, inhibits cellular proliferation, and competes with TCF4 for regulation of target genes more effectively than HNF4a8. Similarly, we also found that HNF4a2 decreases cell numbers more than HNF4a8 in the mES inducible lines. Our findings provide insight into the distinct role of the P1- and P2-HNF4a in cancer and normal development.


This guide offers a set of resources available to Brown users covering the region of South Asia (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Burma, Bangladesh, Bhutan and parts of Central Asia).


The procedure, equipment, materials, and field installation are described for grouting boils that appeared from the chime and screeded gravel under the tube section where the crossing made the transition from tunnel to the open ramp on the manmade sand islands of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. Soil conditions and construction procedure of the tube placement and cofferdam construction that made conventional construction dewatering difficult at the face junction are given. Boils were encountered on two of the four islands and were grouted after temporary containment by sand dikes. An inexpensive viscous bentonite-cement-fresh water grout was mixed and pumped with centrifugal pumps. This grout remained plastic after setting yet was retained in the large voids of the pervious soils. The fourth island was grouted before excavation, thus reducing the dewatering difficulties.


to water and electrolytes. Similarly in treatment, nearly as much space is given to general treatnent of the condition as is given to the correction of the water-electrolyte disturbances. The final chapters are on techniques of blood taking and fluid administration. This method of presentation has advantages if it is desired to look up the treatment of one condition, but it does entail much repetition. All through this book the emphasis is on the practical clinical aspects, and one can almost hear the author's sigh of relief as he turns from the theoretical section to the clinical sections. For a book of this size, there is very little to take exception to, and these few criticisms are only of minor points.


A first kiss. A first rose. Puppy love and "Let's pretend." Innocence, fantasy mischief, and the pleasures of the imagination. These are the quintessential themes of childhood, and the touchstone of Kim Anderson's extraordinary success. A comprehensive compilation that covers the past ten years of his work, "The Art of Kim Anderson" brings together for the first time in an oversize art book 250 of the photographer's images, both classics and new ones. Here, carefully reproduced, are the hand-colored photographs of little boys and girls, dressed up and playing together, that delight collectors around the world and form the multimillion-dollar international licensing empire ranging from greeting cards and posters by Hallmark to figurines by Enesco to calendars, scrapbooks, apparel, jigsaw puzzles, and more. Not only a tribute in pictures, "The Art of Kim Anderson" is also a celebration of childhood and is divide into thematic chapters with accompanying original essays, including "Let's Pretend by Francine Prose, "Little Girls" by Letty Cottin Pogrebin, "First Love" by Phillip Lopate, and others from Susan Cheever, Patricia Hampl, and Catherine Calvert. Seeing life again as if through a child's eyes--this is the joy and spirit of Kim Anderson and his art.


Organizations in Nepal have retrofitted weak school buildings using earthquake-resistant construction techniques for over a decade. Some of these safer school projects have been carried out as technical interventions only, while others have been embedded within programs of community engagement, masonry training, and oversight. Following the 2015 Gorkha earthquake, 12 school sites were assessed through visual inspection and a series of community interviews to understand the impacts of safer school construction projects on local perceptions and construction practice. Compared to communities that had received technical intervention only, or no intervention at all, communities that had experienced community engagement were more knowledgeable of earthquake-resistant construction techniques and reported more adoption of these techniques in housing construction. They also evidenced more trust in the school building, using it as shelter following the earthquake. Community engagement can amplify the benefit of future school retrofit and reconstruction projects, simultaneously building social and infrastructure capital.


Quaternary exhumation of the Carpathians: a record from the Orava-Nowy Targ Intramontane Basin, Western Carpathians (Poland and Slovakia) The Neogene-Quaternary infill of the Orava-Nowy Targ Intramontane Basin comprises two tiers showing contrasting lithologies. The Neogene tier is largely composed of claystones and siltstones, whereas the Quaternary tier is dominated by gravels. The two sequences are separated by an erosional surface underlain by a regolith. Deposition of the Neogene sequence took place during subsidence of the basin. No prominent relief existed in the area of the present-day mountains actually surrounding the basin at that time. The regolith started to form at the onset of basin inversion. Still, no prominent relief existed in the present-day mountains. The onset of deposition of Quaternary gravels in the basin corresponds to acceleration of uplift of the surrounding mountains, which has been continuing until now. The Pieniny Klippen Belt has been subject to erosion, at least locally, from the deposition of the basal part of the Neogene sequence filling the Orava-Nowy Targ Basin until present times. In contrast, the Paleogene cover of the Tatra Mts was removed only during the Quaternary.


Haloarchaea from high saline habitats are known to contain industrially important value-added bioactive compounds such as bacteriorhodopsin, carotenoids, lipids, and proteins. The diversity of Haloarchaea from geographically less explored saline habitats has received less attention. In this study isolation and characterization of the biotechnological potential of novel haloarchaea strains from solar saltern, a hypersaline environment in Marakanam, Tamilnadu was carried out. The samples were collected during the pre-monsoon (July) and post-monsoon (January) season and ten different haloarchaea strains were isolated. UV-Vis spectroscopy analysis revealed the bacteriorhodopsin production by all the isolated strains. Further experiments were carried out to estimate the yield of bacteriorhodopsin and to assess their photocurrent activity and biosensor applications. The maximum yield of bacteriorhodopsin was 5.6 mg/L of cultured lysate. This study will contribute to a better understanding on effect of elicitors on bacteriorhodopsin producing different haloarchaea strains and growing knowledge on their biotechnological applications.


One of the challenges our society faces is the ever increasing amount of data. Among existing platforms that address the system requirements, Hadoop is a framework widely used to store and analyze "big data". On the human side, one of the aids to finding the things people really want is recommendation systems. This paper evaluates highly scalable parallel algorithms for recommendation systems with application to very large data sets. A particular goal is to evaluate an open source Java message passing library for parallel computing called MPJ Express, which has been integrated with Hadoop. As a demonstration we use MPJ Express to implement collaborative filtering on various data sets using the algorithm ALSWR (Alternating-Least-Squares with Weighted-λ-Regularization). We benchmark the performance and demonstrate parallel speedup on Movielens and Yahoo Music data sets, comparing our results with two other frameworks: Mahout and Spark. Our results indicate that MPJ Express implementation of ALSWR has very competitive performance and scalability in comparison with the two other frameworks. 2012 ACM Subject Classification Information systems→ Database management system engines


Criminals and Victims presents an economic analysis of decisions made by criminals and victims of crime before, during, and after a crime or victimization occurs. Its main purpose is to illustrate how the application of analytical tools from economics can help us to understand the causes and consequences of criminal and victim choices, aiding efforts to deter or reduce the consequences of crime. By examining these decisions along a logical timeline over which crimes take place, we can begin to think more clearly about how policy effects change when it is targeted at specific decisions within the body of a crime. This book differs from others by recognizing the timeline of a crime, paying particular attention to victim decisions, and examining each step in the crime cycle at the micro-level. It demonstrates that criminals plan their crimes in systematic, economically logical ways; that deterring the destruction of criminal evidence may deter crime in general; and that white-collar criminals exhibit recidivism patterns not unlike those of street criminals. It further shows that the degree of criminality in a society motivates a variety of self-protection behaviors by potential victims; that not all victim resistance makes matters worse (and some may help); and that victims who report their crimes do not receive high returns for going to the police, helping to explain why some crimes ultimately go unreported.


AI and machine learning are revolutionary technologies being explored by the communication industry to integrate them into communication networks, provide modern services, improve network efficiency and user experience. The intrusion detection system is important for ensuring security of the industrial control system. Hence, in this paper, a machine learning assisted intrusion detection system (MLAIDS) has been proposed to analyse data flow characteristics in industrial network communication security. The progressive use of proposed ML algorithms will improve IDS functionality, especially in industrial control systems. Analysis of data flow characteristics given in this article involves the method of ensuring an adequate degree of security for a dispersed industrial network concerning some main elements, including system features, the present state of requirements, the implementation of suitable countermeasures that may lead to reducing the security risk under a predefined, acceptable threshold. The numerical results show that proposed MLAIDS method achieves high detection accuracy of 98.2%, a performance ratio of 97.5%, a prediction ratio of 96.7%, F1-score of 95.8%, and less root mean square error of 10.5% than other existing methods.


Membrane proteins (MPs) are essential components of cellular membranes and primary drug targets. Rational drug design relies on precise structural information, typically obtained by crystallography; however MPs are difficult to crystallize. Recent progress in MP structural determination has benefited greatly from the development of lipidic cubic phase (LCP) crystallization methods, which typically yield well-diffracting, but often small crystals that suffer from radiation damage during traditional crystallographic data collection at synchrotron sources. The development of new-generation X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) sources that produce extremely bright femtosecond pulses has enabled room temperature data collection from microcrystals with no or negligible radiation damage. Our recent efforts in combining LCP technology with serial femtosecond crystallography (LCP-SFX) have resulted in high-resolution structures of several human G protein-coupled receptors, which represent a notoriously difficult target for structure determination. In the LCP-SFX technique, LCP is recruited as a matrix for both growth and delivery of MP microcrystals to the intersection of the injector stream with an XFEL beam for crystallographic data collection. It has been demonstrated that LCP-SFX can substantially improve the diffraction resolution when only sub-10 µm crystals are available, or when the use of smaller crystals at room temperature can overcome various problems associated with larger cryocooled crystals, such as accumulation of defects, high mosaicity and cryocooling artifacts. Future advancements in X-ray sources and detector technologies should make serial crystallography highly attractive and practicable for implementation not only at XFELs, but also at more accessible synchrotron beamlines. Here we present detailed visual protocols for the preparation, characterization and delivery of microcrystals in LCP for serial crystallography experiments. These protocols include methods for conducting crystallization experiments in syringes, detecting and characterizing the crystal samples, optimizing crystal density, loading microcrystal laden LCP into the injector device and delivering the sample to the beam for data collection.


This letter presents a novel image quality index which extends the Universal Image Quality Index for monochrome images to multispectral and hyperspectral images through hypercomplex numbers. The proposed index is based on the computation of the hypercomplex correlation coefficient between the reference and tested images, which jointly measures spectral and spatial distortions. Experimental results, both from true and simulated images, are presented on spaceborne and airborne visible/infrared images. The results prove accurate measurements of inter- and intraband distortions even when anomalous pixel values are concentrated on few bands.


Measuring neutron star radii with spectroscopic and timing techniques relies on the combination of multiple observables to break the degeneracies between the mass and radius introduced by general relativistic effects. Here, we explore a previously used frequentist and a newly proposed Bayesian framework to obtain the most likely value and the uncertainty in such a measurement. We find that for the expected range of masses and radii and for realistic measurement errors, the frequentist approach suffers from biases that are larger than the accuracy in the radius measurement required to distinguish between the different equations of state. In contrast, in the Bayesian framework, the inferred uncertainties are larger, but the most likely values do not suffer from such biases. We also investigate ways of quantifying the degree of consistency between different spectroscopic measurements from a single source. We show that a careful assessment of the systematic uncertainties in the measurements eliminates the need for introducing ad hoc biases, which lead to artificially large inferred radii.


Food-borne pathogens are the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in developing countries. Changes in eating habits, mass catering, unsafe food storage conditions and poor hygiene practices are major contributing factors to food associated illnesses. In Ethiopia, the widespread habit of ready-to-eat food consumption is potential cause of food borne illnesses. The present study aimed at investigating the prevalence and antimicrobial susceptibility profile of Salmonella species from ready-to-eat foods from catering establishments in Jigjiga City and determining susceptibility pattern of bacterial isolates. This study aimed to assess the ready-to-eat foods Salmonella prevalence and antimicrobial resistance pattern of the isolates. In total, various food samples were collected from 120 hotels and processed to detect Salmonella presence. The ready-to-eat food samples were collected and assessed bacteriologically for Salmonella strains. A total of 120 food samples were bacteriologically evaluated. After confirmation, 25 samples (20.8%) were positive to Salmonella. A total of 5 drug resistance patterns were detected among Salmonella isolates. Out of the 25 isolates 10 (40%) were resistant to three antibiotics, 8 (28%) of the isolates were resistant to 4 of the antibiotics tested, whereas 5 (20%) were resistant to two antibiotics, only 1 (4%) isolate was resistant to 1 antibiotic but 1 (4%) isolate was resistant to five antibiotics. The lack of public sanitary facilities can be another hurdle to keep the desirable hands hygiene of the vendors. In this study, it is reported that severity of the current scenario among the hotel worker hygiene and they are the unknowingly playing role in spread of diseases like Salmonellosis.

 Key words: Food Establishments, ready-to-eat foods, Salmonella.


Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate breastfeeding practices of teen mothers in a pre- and postnatal education and support program. Study Design and Methods: We studied breastfeeding practices of primarily Hispanic and non-Hispanic White teen mothers who participated in the Teen Outreach Pregnancy Services (TOPS) program, which promoted breastfeeding through prenatal programming and postpartum support. Analyses identified the most common reasons participants had not breastfed and, for those who initiated breastfeeding, the most common reasons they stopped. Results: Participants (g = 314) reported on whether and for how long they breastfed. Nearly all participants reported initiating breastfeeding but few breastfed to 6 months. For the most part, reasons they reported stopping breastfeeding paralleled those previously reported for adult mothers across the first several months of motherhood. Clinical Implications: We found that teen mothers can initiate breastfeeding at high rates. Results highlight areas in which teen mothers' knowledge and skills can be supported to promote breastfeeding duration, including pain management and better recognizing infant cues. Our findings expand limited previous research investigating reasons that teen mothers who initiate breastfeeding stop before 6 months.


The authors report the case of a 69 year-old man in whom X-Ray, CT and angiography findings typical for a parietal parasagittal meningioma were caused by cranial metastasis from prostatic adenocarcinoma. The authors stress the importance of the correct interpretation of the clinical features in order to achieve a correct diagnosis.


Traffic control measures like variable speed limits or outflow control can be used to influence the route choice of drivers. In this paper we develop a day-to-day route choice control method that is based on model predictive control (MPC). A basic route choice model forms the basis for the controller. We show that for the given model and for a linear cost function it is possible to reformulate the MPC optimization problem as a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) problem. For MILP problems efficient branch-and-bound solvers are available that guarantee to find the global optimum. We also illustrate the efficiency of the proposed approach for a simple simulation example involving speed limit control.


This paper focuses on the improvement of the distribution uniformity and consumption rate of the hydrogen (H2) in proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells via optimization of the channel dimensions in the flow-field of bipolar plates. Based on the half-cell model for the anode side numerical simulation is carried out with computational fluid dynamics software Fluent. The method of DOE (Design of Experiment) is used in the simulation, and the results show that channel depth is the most influential factor to H2 consumption rate, channel width comes second, and land width has the least influence.


AIM Vitrectomies are performed either under general anesthesia (GA), local anesthesia (LA), or a combination of both. Postoperative pain is expected to be less in patients with LA because of prolonged action of the local anaesthetic. Pre-emptive analgesia is based on the idea that analgesia initiated before a nociceptive event will be more effective than analgesia commenced afterwards. The authors compared postoperative analgesia in patients with GA combined with preoperative or postoperative LA. METHODS 90 patients scheduled for vitrectomy without buckling were enrolled in the study. 60 patients underwent GA, 30 without LA, 15 with preoperative LA, and 15 with postoperative LA. 30 patients received LA alone. Subjective postoperative pain was determined using the visual analogue scale. RESULTS Postoperative pain was less under LA alone compared to GA alone (p < 0.0001). Additional preoperative application of LA resulted in less pain than additional postoperative application (p <0.05). Additional postoperative peribulbar aneasthesia did not differ from GA alone. CONCLUSION The authors conclude that LA alone or preoperatively in addition to GA provides the best comfort for the patient in vitreoretinal surgery.


Depredation, i.e. the damage or removal, of Patagonian toothfish (Dissostichus eleginoides) from longlines by sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) can cause considerable economic loss for Spanish fishing vessels in the Southwest Atlantic. The fishery also suffers high bycatch rates of seabirds. The main goal of the study was to assess the extent of depredation and seabird bycatch and to test the potential of the so-called "umbrella" system, coupled with attached stones for faster sinking, for minimizing both. Moreover, we investigated the relationships between sightings of sperm whales, depredation, catches, and environmental variables using generalized additive modelling. Data were collected during 297 hauls on a longliner in 2007/2008 in international waters of the Southwest Atlantic. Sperm whales were sighted during 35% of the hauls, always during gear retrieval, and their presence was positively related to fish damage. The overall depredation rate (0.44% of the total catch) was low, but is assumed to be underestimated because sperm whales were suspected of also taking fish without leaving visual evidence. The "umbrella-and-stones" system was highly effective in preventing bycatch and appeared to restrict depredation, but significantly reduced the catches. The results demonstrate that there is still some way to go to solve the problem of depredation.


Purpose: Purpose of our study was to report on local control, locoregional control (LRC), disease-free-survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) in women with early stage breast cancer treated with lhe 3D-CRT Simultaneously Integrated Boost-technique (3D-CRT-SIB) as part of breast conserving radiotherapy (RT). In previous reports from our institution, the 3D-CRT-SIB was superior to the sequential boost (SB)-technique regarding unwanted excessive dose to the boost area and shorter overall treatment time. However, clinical outcome remains to be determined. Materials: The study population was composed of 482 consecutive female invasive breast cancer patients (stage I-III) treated with 3D-CRT-SIB, following breast conserving surgery, at the University Medical Center Groningen between 2005-2008. Data was collected retrospec1ively from medical files. The fractionation scheme used was 28 times 1.8 Gy to the whole ipsilateral breast and simultaneously delivered 2.3 Gy (74.5%) to the tumour bed or 2.4 Gy in case of close or focally positive resection margins. The total applied breast dose was 50.4 Gy with a dose to the boost area of 64.4 or 67.2 Gy. These schedules are biologically equivalent to 25 x 2 Gy with a sequential boost dose of 8 x 2 Gy or 10 x 2 Gy using an αβ of 10 for tumour control. Next to outcome report, we identified prognostic factors for any recurrence (LRR and metastases as first event) by using multivariate Cox regression survival analysis. Results: At diagnosis, the mean age was 57.6 (SO 10.7 years). Mean follow-up was 33.9 (SO 11.3) months. Tumours≤2 cm were observed in 363 (75.3%) patients and 149 (30.9%) patients had node positive disease. Chemotherapy was given in 178 (36.9%), hormonal therapy in 188 (39.0%) and regional RT in 26 (5.4%) women, respectively. Local control with 2 ipsilateral in-breast recurrences was 99.4% at 36 months. The 36-months LRC, DFS and OS were 99.1%, 94.9% and 99.0%, respectively. During followup, 4 women had a LRR, 20 developed distant metastases and 7 died, all of breast cancer. In muitivariate analysis, tumours larger than 2 cm (Hazard ratio (HR) 3.2: 95%-confidence interval (CI) 1.3-7.5, p=0.009) and grade II/III differentiation (HR 2.71; 95%-CI 1.15-6.39: p=0.023) were risk factors for any recurrence. Conclusions: The 3D-CRT-SIB technique In breast conservinq therapy results in excellent local control, regional control and overall survival. Longer follow-up is needed to further confirm these results.


Capital structure decision is vital that it would affect the corporate performance
in terms of profitability and investment value. Leveraging, one of capital structure
decision involves extending the company resources through external resources such as
loans and borrowing, either for long term or short term. Many financial advocates
proposed that leveraging improves corporate performance by exploring the greater
market opportunities, achieving economies of scale and producing better financial
ratios in terms of valuation. However, theories may not always work in real life
environment. This study takes on twenty five selected public listed companies in Bursa
Malaysia which criteria to be Sarawak-based companies. Sarawak is indeed the best
choice for study due to wide geographical and coverage areas, which basically push
these companies to incur more costs to reach every corner of the market to excel in a
competitive market condition. The relationship between leveraging and corporate
performance is undertaken by using financial ratios as indicator, where correlation
analysis is used to determine the relationship between independent variable
(represented by Gearing Ratio) with dependent variables ( represented by ROA, ROE,
PM and EPS ratio). The findings revealed that Gearing Ratio has significant positive
negative with ROA, with the remaining relationship were insignificant. Further
VI
revelation indicated that Short Term Borrowing factored the positive relationship with
both ROA and ROE. This suggests that these companies preferred external borrowing
while preferring to commit in higher short term borrowing rates rather than tied up to
long commitment. In reflect of negative impact of leveraging, we encourage
companies to acquire funds internally or taking up long term borrowing to increase
fund.


Konter A. 2011. Seasonal patterns of aggressiveness in colonial Great Crested Grebes Podiceps cristatus. Ardea 99: 85–92. In birds, coloniality is considered to be evolutionary more advanced than solitary breeding. Territorial Great Crested Grebes Podiceps cristatus may engage in opportunistic colonial breeding. The present study focuses on behavioural aspects associated with clumped nesting. Based on the assumption that different agonistic interactions may trigger different costs, aggressiveness during colony establishment and subsequent nesting in the Great Crested Grebe was measured. Upon platform initiation, focal pairs claimed a territory by performing intense platform courtship. With agonistic behaviour they tried to prevent additional conspecifics from settling in their direct vicinity. As a consequence, early levels of aggression in the entire colony increased with the numbers of settled pairs. Quite quickly however, aggressiveness declined despite additional pairs settling and long before the maximum number of platforms for a particular year was reached. Two main phenomena may have contributed to the decline in aggression. First, colonial Great Crested Grebes could have been conducting behaviour consistent with the 'dear-enemy-effect'. Second, habituation to or accommodation with new neighbours could have been helped by behavioural adaptations. Focal pairs provided evidence for a relationship between aggression and egg-laying. The aggressive behaviour that was observed after clutch initiation could have been an effort to reduce the risk of intraspecific brood parasitism. Thereafter, fighting was uncommon and aggression was greatly limited to ritualized threatening. Aggression levels were higher in areas of high nesting density prior to and during egg-laying, but no longer so after clutch completion. It is concluded that colony establishment in the Great Crested Grebe is not an index of the species' sociability, but rather expresses its phenotypic plasticity to adapt to close neighbours and to contain its aggressiveness.


With an increasing amount of available sensors lifelogging produces more and more data. Thus, realizing necessary condensation and forgetting processes becomes a challenge. In the last three years we investigated Managed Forgetting, Synergetic Preservation and Contextualized Remembering in the so-called ForgetIT project. Using the Semantic Desktop as an ecosystem we have already applied these approaches to personal information management successfully. With these experiences at hand we think that lifelogging could also benefit from these solutions. On the other hand, achievements and findings of the lifelogging community can help us in realizing one of our newest visions. In this paper we will provide more details of our data condensation, preservation and managed forgetting solutions and show how lifelogging could benefit from them. Additionally, we sketch our newest application scenario of a context-focused work environment that will make use of lifelogging technologies.


Patients who had a revision total hip arthroplasty using the Bürch-Schneider anti-protrusio cage (APC) by a single surgeon have been reviewed after a minimum of five years. There were 63 operations in 58 patients with an average age of 63 years (41 to 83) at the time of revision. At an average follow-up of 8.5 years (5 to 18), 15 patients (25.9%) rated their results as excellent, 38 (65.5%) as good, and five (8.6%) as fair. Five further revisions of the acetabular prosthesis were required, three due to aseptic loosening, one for recurrent dislocation and one due to sepsis. Of the remainder, one was definitely loose, two probably loose, and 12 possibly so. Impressive augmentation of bone stock can be achieved with the anti-protrusio cage, while enabling the hip to be centred in its anatomical position.


This paper describes an interactive presentation that introduces the Talking Heads website, which was originally proposed at the AVSP'97 meeting in Rhodes, Greece. Talking Heads is an effort to bring together information from a wide range of sources. The site provides interactive access to multimodal material in both its original form and as summarized by us. In addition, the authors have provided historical information, supporting essays and tutorials, interviews, etc., that try to contextualize and make coherent this rapidly developing area. Both the website and the interactive presentation are described.


This study examines whether or not banks in Nigeria have experienced improvement in their Return on Equity ratio (ROE) following the wave of mergers and acquisitions that swept through the banking sector in 2004 2005. Basically, the study engaged in matched sample comparisons of the mean ROE ratios of the merged banks with the stand-alone banks before and after consolidation. Study data were obtained from the annual reports of the banks to compute mean ROEs of the banks across the period under study. Chow Structural Break tests, Paired Sample t-statistics and Independent Sample t-statistics were performed on the mean ROEs of the banks before mergers and the ROEs of consolidated banks. We obtained evidences that suggest that mergers and acquisitions (M & as) in the banking sector do not improve the Return on Equity ratios of the banks involved. This study thus, concludes that there is insignificant or no improvement in bank's financial performance, (ROE) following consolidation. Therefore, we recommend based on our findings that participants in subsequent bank mergers must be prepared to be disappointed as most M & as have been and are still associated with results that are hardly consistent with pre-merger optimistic expectations. The implication for the operators in the banking sector is that pre-merger optimistic expectations are oftentimes not realistic; therefore, other strategies should be explored to shore up the fortunes of failing banks rather than embarking solely on M & A.


This paper studies the linear convergence of the subspace constrained mean shift (SCMS) algorithm, a well-known algorithm for identifying a density ridge defined by a kernel density estimator. By arguing that the SCMS algorithm is a special variant of a subspace constrained gradient ascent (SCGA) algorithm with an adaptive step size, we derive the linear convergence of such SCGA algorithm. While the existing research focuses mainly on density ridges in the Euclidean space, we generalize density ridges and the SCMS algorithm to directional data. In particular, we establish the stability theorem of density ridges with directional data and prove the linear convergence of our proposed directional SCMS algorithm.


Thermal hydraulics of nuclear reactor as a basis of reactor safety has a very important role in reactor design and control. The thermal-hydraulic analysis provides input data to the reactor-physics analysis, whereas the latter gives information about the distribution of heat sources, which is needed to perform the thermal-hydraulic analysis. In this study single heated channel model as a very fast model for predicting thermal hydraulics behavior of pressurized water reactor core has been developed. For verifying the results of this model, we used RELAP5 code as US nuclear regulatory approved thermal hydraulics code. The results of developed single heated channel model have been checked with RELAP5 results for WWER-1000. This comparison shows the capability of single heated channel model for predicting thermal hydraulics behavior of reactor core.


A nonlinear dynamics bond graph model of gear pair is established including the time-varying stiffness, transmission error and tooth surface friction. A capacitive component C is introduced to represent the loads and tooth elastic deformation while introducing the concept of switched power junctions (SPJ) to describe time-varying gear mesh stiffness with clearance, and flow Sf represents the influences of the gear transmission error on the system dynamic equations. The tooth surface friction bond graph model involving the relationship of the relative velocity and the direction of friction are developed. According to the causal relations and the power flow, the state-space equations of the gear bond graph model are obtained. Research results show that bond graph modeling method can solve the modeling problem of the gear nonlinear dynamics.


PURPOSE
To retrospectively determine the relative accuracy of liver fat quantification with out-of-phase gradient-echo magnetic resonance (MR) imaging and fat-saturated fast spin-echo MR imaging in patients with and without cirrhosis, with histologic analysis as the reference standard.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Committee on Human Research approval was obtained. Patient consent was not required. Data collection ended before HIPAA regulations were implemented, but patient anonymity was maintained. Twenty-seven patients, 16 with cirrhosis, were retrospectively identified who underwent MR imaging before histopathologic evaluation of liver fat at biopsy or surgery. The patient population consisted of 15 male and 12 female patients (mean age, 55 years; range, 16-75 years). One radiologist blinded to the histopathologic results recorded mean signal intensity derived from three regions of interest placed in the right and left lobes of the liver on three sections and signal intensity of the spleen from one region of interest within the same section. Liver fat was quantified with the relative loss of signal intensity on out-of-phase images compared with that on in-phase T1-weighted gradient-echo images and with relative loss of signal intensity on T2-weighted fast spin-echo MR images obtained with fat saturation compared with those obtained without fat saturation. Hotelling t test was used to compare correlation coefficients between relative signal intensity differences and histopathologically determined percentage of fat.

RESULTS
In patients without cirrhosis, liver fat quantification with fat-saturated fast spin-echo MR imaging was significantly better than it was with out-of-phase gradient-echo MR imaging (r = 0.92 vs 0.69, P < .01). In patients with cirrhosis, liver fat quantification was correlated only with fat-saturated fast spin-echo MR imaging (r = 0.76, P < .01); the relative signal intensity loss on out-of-phase gradient-echo MR images was not correlated with histopathologically determined percentage of fat (r = 0.25, P = .36).

CONCLUSION
Preliminary results suggest liver fat may be more accurately quantified with fat-saturated fast spin-echo MR imaging than with out-of-phase gradient-echo MR imaging, especially in patients with cirrhosis.


The implementation of distributed systems includes an extensive component integration effort. Integrating secure components into a distributed system is a task more difficult than standard integration. Current system high distributed secure systems will be transitioned to multilevel secure systems as multilevel secure components become available. Considerations and changes that are required for successful integration of these components are discussed. These changes fall into the categories of concept of operations, security policy, and security architecture.<<ETX>>


In this article, the viscosifying abilities, rheological properties, flow characteristics of pectinate hydrophobically associating polymer (PHAP) solutions with different hydrophobe content were studied using technical methods of viscosity measurement, rheological and core flow experiments. Researches on viscosifying of different PHAPs at 20°C and 65°C in distilled water and saline indicate that, with the raise of hydrophobe content, viscosity of polymer solutions increases first and then decreases, which means that there should be a critical hydrophobe content( CHC). Below CHC, the anti-shear ability of polymer solutions enhances as hydrophobe content rises; while the shear resistance would fall down when and after the content reaches CHC. In high permeability porous media, all polymer solutions take on greater injectivity, and RFF can all be higher than 5, yet with the increasing of hydrophobe content, RF goes up first and then declines. It could be an effective way to enhance mobility control ability, improve polymer flooding effect in high permeability reservoirs and design polymer molecular structure more reasonably, using the pectinate structure and hydrophobic association interaction between polymer moleculars.


Globalization of standardized IT services has made offshoring a common practice for multinational corporations. This annotated bibliography presents an analysis of selected literature published from 2004 to 2013. Literature defines offshoring and identifies social factors and ethical frameworks to consider related to offshoring standardized IT services (specifically call center and IT data management activities). When viewed within Rawls' Principles of Justice (in Lamont, 2013), factors include codes of conduct, family connections, and national religious holidays.


The morphometric relationships, age, and growth of the Ocean Whitefish (Caulolatilus princeps, Jenyns 1842) were studied from a sample of 1783 specimens (1196 individuals for ageing), taken around the Bay of La Paz, in the southern Gulf of California from February 1986 to May 1987. The standard length ranged from 152 to 505 mm, and the eviscerated weight from 150 to 2660 g. The standard length-eviscerated weight relationships were estimated as: W = 0.00029 x L2.922, W = 0.00024 x L2.960, W = 0.00021 x L2.979 for males, females and the sexes combined, respectively. Twenty one age classes, ranging from 1 to 21 years were defined by whole burned otolith readings. Mean standard length, and standard length by otoliths edge-at-age data for the first 16 age groups were used to estimate the growth parameters of the von Bertalanffy equation: L∞ = 476.7 mm, K = 0.093, to = -3.904, for males; L∞ = 474.8 mm, K = 0.101, to = -3.339, for females; L∞ = 460.9 mm, K = 0.113, to = -2.765, for the sexes combined. The asymptotic weights were: 1847.6, 2006.8 and 1972.1 g, for males, females, and the sexes combined, respectively. Total (Z year-1) and natural (M year-1) mortalities were estimated as, respectively: 0.45 and 0.15 for males, 0.42 and 0.15 for females, and 0.41 and 0.17 year-1 for the sexes combined. The exploitation ratios (E) were: 0.67 for males, 0.63 for females, and 0.60 for the sexes combined, indicating that the fishing pressure on this population is higher than the recommended ratio of 0.5.


: The identification and sequencing of the antigen receptor of T cells coupled with the demonstration that MHC proteins specifically bind immunogenic peptides, and the solution of the crystal structure of HLA A2 and Aw68 collectively have led to a working model of how T cells recognize protein antigens. In contrast with many other known receptor-ligand interactions, this unique recognition mechanism has evolved to allow receptors on two separate cells to contact a common peptide ligand. To accomplish this, MHC proteins and the T cell receptor both differ from previously defined biological receptors in many respects. The MHC class I and II molecules are membrane glycoproteins that have evolved the remarkable capacity to bind and display on the surface of cells an extremely large number of structurally diverse peptides, while the antigen specific receptors of T cells are positively selected to specifically interact with the MHC protein alleles of the individual and only some of the repertoire of self peptides.


X-ray tomography is a powerful method for visualizing the three-dimensional structure of an object with a high spatial resolution. Conventional time-resolved x-ray tomography using synchrotron radiation requires fast rotation of the object, which limits the temporal resolution and hampers its application to, e.g., fluids and in vivo observation of living beings. Here, we present a multibeam x-ray optical system for high-speed 4D tomography, which can obtain projection images of a sample in a wide angular range simultaneously. It consists of about three dozen single-crystalline blades oriented with different angles to the incident beam, which each Bragg-reflect a part of the incident x-rays in the direction of the sample position. Thirty-two projection images covering an angular range of more than ±70∘ were obtained without moving the sample or optical system, with an exposure time of 1 ms. The data set was successfully used for reconstructing the three-dimensional structure of two test samples. The optical system provides the basis for realizing millisecond time resolution x-ray tomography of nonrepeatable phenomena, and can be expected to be useful for other applications as well, for example, for time-resolved element-specific imaging.


Lossy compression introduces complex compression artifacts, particularly the blocking artifacts, ringing effects and blurring. Existing algorithms either focus on removing blocking artifacts and produce blurred output, or restores sharpened images that are accompanied with ringing effects. Inspired by the deep convolutional networks (DCN) on super-resolution, we formulate a compact and efficient network for seamless attenuation of different compression artifacts. We also demonstrate that a deeper model can be effectively trained with the features learned in a shallow network. Following a similar "easy to hard" idea, we systematically investigate several practical transfer settings and show the effectiveness of transfer learning in low level vision problems. Our method shows superior performance than the state-of-the-arts both on the benchmark datasets and the real-world use cases (i.e. Twitter).


This paper shows that unbundling an incumbent's infrastructure only results in a substantial improvement in broadband deployment for middle-income countries, but not for their high income counterparts. Our statistical analysis of approximately 100 countries showed that GDP per capita, population, competition and unbundling are all factors that can lead a carrier to provide broadband services in a country. The logit models show that unbundling has a significant positive impact on the availability of broadband services. The OLS analysis indicates that GDP per capita, population size, price, competition, the percentage of dial-up Internet users, and hosts all have positive effects on the number of subscribers. One implication of these results is that if a policy is to be implemented to promote broadband, it should either foster competition through unbundling and/or reduced prices. Efforts to develop local content can also improve broadband adoption.


CYP2G1 is a cytochrome P450 monooxygenase expressed uniquely in the olfactory mucosa (OM). We have generated Cyp2g1-null mice to identify the roles of CYP2G1 in the biology and the tissue-specific toxicity of xenobiotic compounds in the nose. Homozygous Cyp2g1-null mice are viable and fertile; they show no evidence of embryonic lethality, morphological abnormality, or developmental deficits; and they seem to have normal olfactory ability. However, OM microsomes from Cyp2g1-null mice were found to have significantly lower activities than microsomes from wild-type mice in the metabolism of testosterone and progesterone (∼60% decrease) and in the metabolic activation of coumarin (>70% decrease). Unexpectedly, a significant reduction in the expression of the Cyp2a5 gene was found in the liver, the lateral nasal gland (LNG), and, to a lesser extent, the kidney of adult Cyp2g1-null mice. The loss of CYP2G1 expression, and the associated decrease in the hepatic expression of CYP2A5, did not decrease systemic clearance, extent of hepatotoxicity, or OM toxicity of acetaminophen (AP). However, the LNG was protected from AP (at 400 mg/kg) toxicity in the Cyp2g1-null mice. Paradoxically, the LNG did not have detectable CYP2G1, and the decrease in LNG CYP2A5 expression in the Cyp2g1-null mice was not accompanied by decreases in microsomal AP metabolism. We hypothesize that OM CYP2G1 (through a paracrine pathway) or LNG CYP2A5 may indirectly influence resistance of the LNG to chemical toxicity, possibly by regulating gene expression in the LNG through steroid hormones or other endogenous P450 substrates and their metabolites.


Financial institutions are the first vertical level in the fight against money laundering and to improve security. Therefore, it is essential that tools are available to enable effective detection and analysis of suspicious transactions, or unusual business operations. These, in line with the legislative requirements, report to responsible entities - FIUs representing the second vertical plane in the fight against money laundering. However, special software tools are available for obligated persons, especially for financial institutions that carry out tens of millions of financial transactions a day. These can trigger the alert to most unusual operations. The software automatically creates customer profiles, including expected behavior and executed transactions. Using advanced statistical analyses, it identifies unusual business operations, i.e. financial transactions significantly different from those carried out in the past. It is very useful to apply software support in form of electronic detection of indicators of legalization of crime proceeds. However, the output of such support software requires a more detailed and demanding investigation of the nature of operation and is based on the use of special algorithms based on mathematical and statistical methods. The software builds on the results of scientific research.


This paper reviews and discusses the concept of nonlinear optical spectroscopy (NLOS) and microscopy employing ultra-broadband laser pulses. A spectral phase modulation technique of the ultra-broadband pulses, which allows the control of nonlinear optical processes, enables multimodal imaging in nonlinear optical microscopy. This technique uses the difference of the excitation spectra of molecules of interest. A spectroscopic technique combining NLOS with a Fourier-transform (FT) spectroscopy provides a broadband excitation spectrum with the bandwidth of the ultra-broadband pulse and a high spectral resolution in a single measurement. FT-NLOS can also be applied directly to multispectral microspectroscopy.


This study analyzed the structure of onion marketing in Yola North Local Government Area of Adamawa State, Nigeria. Data were collected from Jimeta Modern market, Old market and Yola by-pass market based on the existing sampling frame. Descriptive statistics, Gini index and Marketing efficiency were the analytical tools employed. The results revealed that majority (92.5%) of the respondents were male, 62.5% were married with an average family size of 4 persons per household and 52.5% had some level of formal education with a mean marketing experience of 10 years. The average sales recorded per month for wholesalers and retailers were N2,888,000.00 and N372,237.50 respectively, while their respective net incomes per month were N234,610.00 and N35,743.73 respectively. The value of Gini coefficient for wholesalers and retailers were 0.47 and 0.52 respectively, an indication of inequality in earnings among the marketers due to high market concentration resulting to poor market structure. The results further revealed that onion marketing is inefficient in the study area with marketing efficiency scores of 8.82% and 10.62% for wholesalers and retailers respectively. The Return on Investment (ROI) for wholesalers and retailers were N0.081 and N0.096 respectively with retailers having relatively higher ROI. Lack of credit facilities (80%), high cost of transportation (73%) and security challenges (42.5%) were identified as the major problems affecting onion marketers in the area. The study recommends that government should expand its anchor borrower scheme program to include marketers in order to enable them expand their business and improve marketing efficiency.


This paper proposes a perceptually optimized UDP-lite protocol for streaming the 3D model over lossy wireless network. Before the transmission, the model is divided into perceptually important data and less perceptually important data and constructed into a progressive representation. And then, the progressive model is streamed by the modified protocol based on the UDP_lite protocol. The simulation results demonstrate that end-to-end delay has significant improvement and the graphics quality has no apparent degradation.


Responding in multiple periodic and aperiodic schedules of equal mean reinforcement rate was examined during extinction, satiation, and in the presence of various free-food schedules. In Experiments I and II, pigeons were trained on multiple variable-intervalfixed-interval schedules. Decreases in the rate of responding due to extinction, satiation, or food schedules were approximately equal regardless of the temporal pattern of reinforcer presentation. In Experiment III, pigeons responded on a two-component multiple schedule in which each component was a two-member homogeneous response chain terminating in a fixed-interval schedule during one component and in a variable-interval schedule during the other. The length of both terminal links was varied over a series of conditions. Initiallink responding in the fixed-interval component was reduced more by increasing terminallink length than was initial-link responding in the variable-interval component. However, no differences in resistance to satiation and extinction were obtained across the fixed and variable components. If the relative decrease in responding produced by satiation and extinction is used as an index of the "value" of the conditions maintaining responding, then these data suggest that fixed and variable schedules of equal mean length are equally valued. This conclusion, however, is not consistent with findings of preference for variable over fixed schedules obtained in studies using concurrent-chain procedures.


In this paper, we evaluate the voice traffic performance of an OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) wireless access system. We propose an algorithm for serving handover calls with higher priority than new calls, considering different AMC (adaptive modulation and coding) modes. The purpose is to efficiently utilize the scarce radio resources in order to improve the system performance.


Abstract 1. Human hepatocytes that had been cold-preserved in SureTranTM matrix (Abcellute Ltd, Cardiff, UK) were used for studies on cell viability, cytochrome P450 (CYP) 3A4, 2B6 and 1A2 induction and hepatic drug transporters. It has recently been shown that basal CYP activities are maintained in cold-preserved hepatocytes (Palmgren et al., 2012). 2. After 5 d of cold preservation, the viability was still more than 70%, and after 8 d it was around 60%. In hepatocytes that had been cold-preserved for 3 d, the activity of CYP3A4 was induced around 15-fold upon treatment with 8 µM rifampicin for 72 h. For CYP2B6, the activity was induced 4- to 16-fold in hepatocytes that had been cold-preserved for 3 d and thereafter treated with 1 mM phenobarbital for 72 h. The activity of CYP1A2 was low and close to the limit of detection in non-treated cells that had been cold-preserved for up to 3 d, while the activity increased in cells treated with 0.3–25 µM β-naphthoflavone for 72 h. CYP3A4, 2B6 and 1A2 mRNA levels were only determined with hepatocytes from one donor and increased upon treatment with the inducers. 3. Hepatic uptakes of estrone-3-sulfate, taurocholate, ipratropium and rosuvastatin were stable in human hepatocytes that had been cold-preserved for up to 2 d. 4. In summary, cold-preserved human hepatocytes demonstrate retained viability and can advantageously be used for in vitro induction studies and for studies of hepatic uptake transporters.


Requirements modelling helps software engineers understand a system's required behaviour and explore alternative system designs. It also generates a formal software specification that can be used for testing, verification, and debugging. However, elaborating such models requires expertise and significant human effort. The paper aims at reducing this effort by automating an essential activity of requirements modelling which consists in deriving a machine specification satisfying a set of goals in a domain. It introduces deontic input-output automata - an extension of input-output automata with permissions and obligations - and an automated synthesis technique over this formalism to support such derivation. This technique helps modellers identifying early when a goal is not realizable in a domain and can guide the exploration of alternative models to make goals realizable. Synthesis techniques for input-output or interface automata are not adequate for requirements modelling.


Because of the effects of high petroleum and natural gas prices, Indonesia is implementing national policies and legislation to encourage bioenergy production as a means to achieve energy security and self-sufficiency and to reduce reliance on fossil fuel reserves. The growing national and international demand of bioenergy is particular interest to developing countries like Indonesia for seeking opportunities on economic growth and trade. Indonesia has a comparative advantage for bioenergy production because of greater availability of land, favorable climatic conditions for agriculture and lower labor costs. However, Indonesia faces socio-economic and environmental implications affecting the potential to benefit from the increased local and global demand of bioenergy. The interrelationship between land uses and the competing needs of energy and food security is a key issue in the bioenergy that should be considered. In addition, the effects of large-scale bioenergy production on global commodity prices are a significant trade concern. Bioenergy production may also entail harmful environmental effects such as deforestation and loss of biodiversity. Regulation is required to reduce the negative impacts of large-scale production, as well as to ensure that the most costeffective and highest-energy conversion technologies are used. Given the opportunities and risks, criteria for the sustainable development of the bioenergy industry should be clearly established in both international and national regulatory frameworks.


OBJECTIVES
Emergency department (ED)-based HIV testing rates are historically low, but recent testing trends surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and launch of the Ending the HIV Epidemic (EHE) initiative are unknown. The objective of the study is to estimate recent trends in the proportion of ED visits that included HIV testing.

METHODS
We performed a cross-sectional analysis of the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS), a weighted nationally representative survey of US EDs, from 2014 to 2020. Given EHE's focus on several rural Southern jurisdictions as well as populations disproportionately affected by HIV, we stratified by characteristics including US region and visit-listed race and ethnicity.

RESULTS
The proportion of ED visits that included HIV testing increased from 2014 (0.6%) to 2018 (1.1%) but was lower in 2019 and 2020 (0.8%). Compared to other regions the South had the lowest rates of testing in both 2019 (0.6%) and 2020 (0.5%); testing rates in the non-metropolitan South remained ≤0.1% across all years. Testing rates for ED visits by persons who identified as Hispanic/Latino were highest in 2018 (2.2%) but were sharply lower in 2019 and 2020 (0.8%).

CONCLUSION
After a small but insufficient increase in ED-based HIV testing since 2014, rates decreased between 2018 and 2019 and were stable between 2019 and 2020. Overall, very few ED visits during our entire study period included an HIV test and there were persistently low rates of HIV testing for populations prioritized in national efforts and during visits in rural jurisdictions in the South.


The photocatalytic activity of modified semiconductor nanocomposite (ZnO/TiO2)-β-CD system, for decolorization of brilliant green dye has been studied under UV light (λmax= 365 nm) irradiation and results are compared with the activities of (ZnO/TiO2), bare ZnO and bare TiO2. The nanocomposite has been characterized by X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy. UV–visible analysis has also been used to confirm the complexation pattern between β-CD and the dye. Various experimental parameters like ZnO:TiO2 ratio, initial concentration of dye, irradiation time and pH have been investigated. Kinetic results show that the decolorization reaction follows pseudo-first order kinetics. The mineralization of brilliant green has been confirmed by chemical oxygen demand measurements. A suitable reaction mechanism for decolorization of the dye by (ZnO/TiO2)-β-CD has also been proposed. The present results show that (ZnO/TiO2)-β-CD system is an efficient and low cost modified photocatalyst for the treatment of waste water from textile industries.


The effects of seed magnetic fields on the Richtmyer-Meshkov instability driven by converging cylindrical and spherical implosions in ideal magnetohydrodynamics are investigated. Two different seed field configurations at various strengths are applied over a cylindrical or spherical density interface which has a single-dominant-mode perturbation. The shocks that excite the instability are generated with appropriate Riemann problems in a numerical formulation and the effect of the seed field on the growth rate and symmetry of the perturbations on the density interface is examined. We find reduced perturbation growth for both field configurations and all tested strengths. The extent of growth suppression increases with seed field strength but varies with the angle of the field to interface. The seed field configuration does not significantly affect extent of suppression of the instability, allowing it to be chosen to minimize its effect on implosion distortion. However, stronger seed fields are required in three dimensions to suppress the instability effectively.


BACKGROUND
In regard to urogenital tract cancer studies, an estimated 340,650 new cases and 58,360 deaths from genital system cancer and about 141,140 new cases and 29330 deaths from urinary system were projected to occur in the United States in 2012. The main drawbacks of currently available diagnostic tests constitute the low specificity, costliness and quite high invasiveness.

OBJECTIVE
The main goal of this pilot study was to determine and compare urine metabolic fingerprints in urogenital tract cancer patients and healthy controls.

METHOD
A comparative analysis of the metabolic profile of urine from 30 patients with cancer of the genitourinary system (bladder (n=10), kidney (n=10) and prostate (n=10)) and 30 healthy volunteers as a control group was provided by LC-TOF/MS and GCQqQ/ MS. The data analysis was performed by the use of U-Mann Whitney test or Student's t-test, principal component analysis (PCA) and orthogonal partial least-squares discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA).

RESULTS
As a result, 33, 43, and 22 compounds were identified as statistically significant in bladder, prostate and kidney cancer, respectively, compared to healthy groups.

CONCLUSION
Diverse compounds such as purine, sugars, amino acids, nucleosides, organic acids which play a role in purine metabolism, in tricarboxylic acid cycle, in amino acid metabolism or in gut microbiota metabolism were identified. Only two metabolites namely glucocaffeic acid and lactic acid were found to be in common in studied three types of cancer.


On December 8, 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower proposed in a speech to the United Nations that nuclear nonproliferation be promoted by offering peaceful nuclear technology to countries that would renounce nuclear weapons. Today the value of that basic trade-off-atoms for peace-is in question, along with the institutions that embody it. Deployment of weapons by India and Pakistan, noncompliance with safeguards by North Korea and Iran, and the threat of nuclear terrorism have weakened the image of the Nonproliferation Treaty. And new proposals and technologies for peaceful uses of nuclear power are coming forward, though they are accompanied by the realization that 1950s hopes for nuclear energy "too cheap to meter" were unrealistic. The twenty-five contributors to Atoms for Peace grapple in many ways with nuclear proliferation, nuclear terrorism, and the future of nuclear energy. They include officials and scientists from a wide range of agencies and institutions. Among them are officials or former officials from Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, Canada, Korea, and Japan, from the U.S. departments of state, energy, and defense, the U.S. Senate, the National Security Council, the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations, the Nuclear Threat Initiative, MIT, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the College of William and Mary, and the University of California. Atoms for Peace also includes a set of fundamental speeches and documents relating to Atoms for Peace and its institutions.


Smartphone applications has been growing rapidly with proven many applications that can be downloaded for free on the internet. One smartphone apps harnessed and used as this research is Whatsapp instant messaging. The application is a chat application that is popular amongst smartphone users. Whatsapp instant messaging applications facilitate communication between users free of charge for use of internet data connection to send messages, pictures, video, and voice communications. The object of the research is the students, where they use the application to obtain information and exchange of information among fellow students like the subject matter, schoolwork, extracurricular activities or activities. The purpose of the research conducted to determine how perceptions of the usefulness of whatsapp instant messaging applications on the students.


A factor or factors concentrated on leukocytes of cancer patients depress the proliferative response of lymphocytes to stimulation with autologous tumor. Inhibitory activity with material eluted from cells resides in neither high nor lower molecular weight fractions but in a combination of the two. The finding suggests that in vitro inhibition of lymphocyte proliferation to autochthonous tumor occurs because of antigen-antibody complexes.


Public education in the United States acts as a governmental tool of neoliberalism, through which state power and sovereignty are deployed and transformed in daily life. Here, I examine how the divergence of sovereignty is exerted over refugee students and their families in US public education. Drawing on 42 months of ethnographic data collected on refugee and other immigrant networks in Southern Arizona, a US–Mexico border region marked by increasing anti-immigrant policies and practices, I reveal how the everyday practices and policies of one school district reflect and reinforce the government's control over refugee students. I argue that the ways in which the students are sorted, marginalized, and denied opportunities as learners is inextricable from their positioning as non-citizens by the federal and state governments. Specifically, I demonstrate the linkages between the federal education policy, Every School Succeeds Act, Arizona State's Proposition 203: English Language Education for the Children in Public Schools, which eliminated bilingual education, and the school district's approach to teaching refugee students. Finally, I offer recommendations for creating more inclusive, assets-based learning environments for refugee students that push back against the neoliberal favoring of competition and one-size-fits-all solutions in public education.


Purpose: The purpose of this manuscript is to describe the regulatory, technological, and training considerations for audiologists investigating telehealth and to offer some examples of audiology services provided through telehealth. Method: The authors presented the regulatory components, the technology required for audiology staff and patients, and staff training for the audiology telehealth program at Cincinnati Children ' s Hospital Medical Center. Four case studies highlighting the successful use of telehealth in providing auditory device services to patients were also presented. Results and Conclusion: The described regulatory, technological, and training hierarchy provides a framework for audiologists interested in starting a telehealth program. The cases presented illustrate that telehealth can be used to provide some auditory device services, such as troubleshooting, mapping, and parent consulting. in terminology used by authors in cited articles will be used in order to accurately report research.


Within the framework of the theory of deterministic chaos, a nonlinear first-order differential equation with delay and relaxation with periodic influence on channel current for the parameter of order (deviation of channel current from the equilibrium value) was obtained. The numerical solutions of the equation indicate a chaotic dynamics of the order parameter and conformation potential of the channel protein with positive Lyapunov indices. By integration in the time interval between the "jumps" of ions through energy barriers of the channel protein, a mapping was obtained that also results in chaotic solutions realized in experiments. Basic kinetic characteristics of ionic channels for the mapping were obtained: the probability for the channel to be in the open state, P0, and the mean duration of a pack of current pulses depending on controlling parameters. Algorithms for constructing bifurcation diagrams with the transition to chaos and for determining Lyapunov indices and Kholmogorov entropy, pulsation spectra, and other parameters of chaotic dymanics were developed.


: In the past years, considerable progress has been made with the molecular dissection of proteoglycans in normal and fibrotic human and rat liver. Three main types of glycosaminoglycans are found in liver, which, in order of decreasing concentration, are: heparan sulphate (more than 0.6 of total glycosaminoglycans), dermatan sulphate and chondroitin-4,6-sulphate isomers. Keratan sulphate has not been detected in rat and human liver. In fibrotic liver matrix, there is a more than 4-fold increase of the overall concentration of glycosaminoglycans, which is most pronounced for chondroitin sulphate and dermatan sulphate and less prominent for heparan sulphate. In fact, the latter glycosaminoglycan decreases fractionally. Stimulated synthesis rather than reduced breakdown in response to liver injury has been determined as the main mechanism of enhanced deposition. Fat-storing cells, a special type of nonparenchymal liver cells located in the subendothelial space of Disse, are the principal cellular source of hepatic preoteoglycans. In areas of necroinflammation, these cells transform into myofibroblasts, which express the genes for decorin, biglycan, syndecan and presumably other proteoglycans characterized by cloned core proteins. Proteoglycan synthesis in these cells is stimulated in a paracrine way mainly by TGF-beta, which is elaborated by activated Kupffer cells/macrophages and released from disintegrated thrombocytes. Furthermore, TGF-beta is also secreted by myofibroblasts, which are stimulated in an autocrine pathway by TGF-beta. Myofibroblasts can also activate resting (non-transformed) fat-storing cells in a paracrine way. In addition to TGF-beta, significant roles are also played by TNF-alpha, TGF-alpha/EGF, PDGF and FGF. Their effects depend on expression of the respective growth factor receptor that determines the stage of fat-storing cell transformation, on the interaction with other cytokines/growth factors, and on the extracellular matrix supporting these cells. Available data point to a potentially significant role which proteoglycans might fulfil in the regulation of cellular functions and in the maintenance of the supramolecular organization of the extracellular matrix in normal and diseased liver, in particular during the process of liver fibrogenesis.


A 20-year-old Japanese man with a hypothalamic tumor (most likely germ-cell tumor) which caused secondary hypoadrenalism, hypogonadism and diabetes insipidus developed hypercalcemia and acute renal failure. The serum levels of intact PTH (iPTH), PTH-related protein (PTH-rP), 1,25-dihydroxy vitamin D (1,25- (OH)2 D), ACTH, cortisol, gonadotropins and testosterone were decreased, but his serum levels of triiodothyronine (T3) and thyroxine (T4) were within the normal range at admission, with depressed TSH and slightly increased thyroglobulin. The hypercalcemia was refractory to extensive hydration and calcitonin, but was ameliorated by pamidronate. After irradiation of the hypothalamic tumor, panhypopituitarism gradually developed. The patient has been normocalcemic for the last 2 years and is doing well under replacement therapy with glucocorticoid, L-thyroxine, methyltestosterone and 1-desamino D arginine vasopressin (dDAVP). As to the mechanism of euthyroidism at admission, transient destructive thyroiditis associated with hypopituitarism or delayed development of hypothyroidism following the hypoadrenalism was suggested. This is the first reported case of hypercalcemia in secondary hypoadrenalism due to hypothalamic tumor. Hypercalcemia was most likely induced by increased bone resorption, which was probably elicited by the combined effects of deficient glucocorticoid and sufficient thyroid hormones in addition to hypovolemia and reduced renal calcium excretion. Furthermore, severe dehydration due to diabetes insipidus and disturbance of thirst sensation caused by the hypothalamic tumor aggravated the hypercalcemia, leading to acute renal failure.


This article is an exploration into the thoughts and behaviors of the citizens of Post-War Belfast. More than twenty years have passed since the declared end of the Troubles, a three decade-long civil war taking place in Northern Ireland. While many places in Northern Ireland felt the blows of this war, it seems that none felt them quite as badly as Belfast. In this article, I examine the behaviors and actions via the thoughts and perspectives of citizens of Belfast, a city which is still torn in half, divided by forces such as religion, politics, and law among others. These forces are intimately entangled with one another, so much so that the root of the conflict proves difficult to find. After examining the history of Belfast and its peoples, I create two provisional categories, "those too close to the conflict" and "those too far removed from the conflict."  By doing so I am able to explore what is deemed the normative thought processes of varying people groups, which helps outsiders to glean some understanding of their behavior. In the end, my goal is to give voice to varying sides of the conflict, and while not giving any solution to the conflict, I aim to offer some knowledge and insight as to why it is taking place.


This paper explores the design methodology and effectiveness of small-scale magnetorheological dampers (MRDs) in applications that require variable damping. Previously, applications of MRD have been chiefly limited to vehicle shock absorbers and seismic vibration attenuators. There has been recent biomedical interest in active-damping technology, however, particularly in the field of rehabilitation robotics. The topic at hand is the feasibility of developing MRDs that would be functionally and cosmetically adequate for actuation of an upper limb tremor suppression orthosis. A Bingham plastic model is used to determine MRD's functional characteristics, and experimental data are presented to validate the mathematical model. The feasibility of applying the developed small-scale MRDs to attenuation of tremorous motion is explored.


High-resolution MR of the inner ear performed in 3 consecutive pediatric patients affected by distal renal tubular acidosis (dRTA) and progressive sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) revealed enlarged vestibular aqueducts (LVA) (bilateral in 1 case and unilateral in 2). LVA is associated to sporadic, progressive SNHL, often secondary to minor head trauma and activities involving the Valsalva maneuver. We believe that the presence of LVA may have contributed to the onset of SNHL and its progression in our patients, and therefore want to stress the importance of morphological studies of the inner ear in patients affected by dRTA and SNHL.


Large alveolar cells of normal dog lung are rich in enzymes concerned with oxidative and synthetic pathways. In three experimental situations where ability of the lung to produce surfactant was impaired, the enzyme-rich cells were lacking or absent. Findings support the concept that these cells are sites of active metabolism, possibly including production of surfactant.


Abstract Postsecondary attainment is often viewed as an accomplishment yielding financial, social, and economic gains. Moreover, education has been a passport to a better quality of life. However, certain populations are often hindered from achieving these aforementioned goals. In particular, Black males are viewed from a deficit perspective, especially when it comes to excelling and achieving in the sphere of education. The authors discuss the collaborative role of school psychologists and school counselors as change agents in the college and career readiness of Black males. Specifically, the authors present an innovative approach to using a culturally responsive multitiered system of support that infuses Critical Race Theory to address the negative postsecondary outcomes Black males encounter. School psychologists and school counselors are appropriately trained to implement this model; therefore, recommendations for policy, practice, and research are provided in this article. Impact Statement Given the recent events of anti-Black racism against Black boys and men, currently Daunte Wright and George Floyd in addition to Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, and Tamir Rice, it is obvious that a culturally responsive approach is needed to engage and work with Black males. In the U.S. education system, Black boys and men have the poorest educational outcomes, especially with high school graduation, college-going, and college graduation rates. Therefore, school psychologists and school counselors must serve as the bridge to preparing Black males for postsecondary opportunities and they possess the skills and training to potentially change the narrative and statistics regarding Black boys as well as men in education and beyond.


Due to its environmental degradation including contaminated sediment, poor water quality, and lost habitat, the lower 9.2 km of the Buffalo River is a Great Lakes Area of Concern (AoC). To better understand the river's hydrodynamics, particularly the interaction between the downriver and upriver flow, since 2009 five horizontal and five vertical Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers (H-ADCP and V-ADCP, respectively) have been deployed year round in the lower 9km of the Buffalo River. The ADCPs were programmed to take measurements every 15 (H-ADCPs) or 20 minutes (V-ADCPs). Data were processed to ensure integrity and permit temporal changes to be investigated. During the period of ADCP deployment, the Buffalo River has undergone dredging, including a large-scale environmental dredging project which widened and deepened some sections of the river's channel. ADCP measurements document several different flow behaviors including high flow events related to runoff from snowmelt and high precipitation and flow reversals related to the upriver propagation of Lake Erie wind-driven surges. River velocities generally are low (~10cm/s), but may reach up to 2 m/s during high flow events. The Buffalo River also has its own periodic (~1.75 2 hr) oscillation (river seiche) that is best observed during times of non-lake surge activity or low downstream velocities. The river seiche persists year round during open as well as ice-covered conditions.


The stuffed toy market is quite large, with some manufacturers earning nearly half a billion dollars in revenue per year. However, the vast majority of manufacturers do not currently employ sustainable manufacturing techniques. This paper documents the development of a cost-effective stuffed product by placing an emphasis on sustainability within the design process while maintaining the user appeal of a traditional teddy bear. Specifications were determined by analyzing each of the four stages of the product timeline (extraction, manufacture, use, and disposal) to ensure that sustainability was considered throughout the lifecycle of the product. Material choice was a main focus of the extraction stage, and limiting new material usage was an important goal. Considerations for the manufacturing stage included carbon dioxide produced, waste generated, toxicity, and packaging. Specifications regarding the consumer's use of the product included user appeal, stain resistance, durability, price, and safety concerns. Objectives of the last stage, disposal, included plans to minimize the amount of material sent to landfills by making the product easier to store, improving ease of recycling, and reducing transportation required. These specifications, importance ratings, marginal values, and ideal values are discussed. While investigating more sustainable manufacturing practices, many solutions were found, and the practicality of these solutions was investigated. By incorporating these solutions, the product — Sustain-A-Bear™ — met specifications, embodied sustainability, and also proved cost competitive. Once specification-level analysis was complete, multiple bears were constructed, both to create a baseline for comparison with standard stuffed animal assembly and also to aid in the development of a more sustainable assembly process. Through the use of ultrasonic welding for material bonding to thermally weld materials together and through the use of specialized platens, the bear was assembled from PET fleece (recycled from plastic soda bottles) using significantly less time and energy than that required to sew a bear together. Part reduction and shape simplification also aided bear assembly throughput. Furthermore, tensile testing on an Instron machine yielded results better than those resulting from sewing, owing largely to the reduction of stress concentrations. Finally, overall cost analysis indicates that stuffed animals made in this fashion could, in fact, be affordably made in the United States.Copyright © 2009 by ASME


We describe a set of interaction techniques that allow a user of a magic-lens style augmented reality application to take snapshots of an augmented scene and revisit them virtually for interaction at a later time. By storing a still image of the background along with the camera pose, this approach allows augmentations to remain dynamic and interactive. This makes it possible for the user to manipulate virtual objects from the vantage points of different locations without the overhead of physically traveling between those locations. Preliminary results from a user study show that participants were able to complete an alignment task significantly faster and as accurately when using snapshots as opposed to physical travel. Qualitative questionnaire answers showed that participants preferred using snapshots over walking and found it less demanding.


Background/Purpose:
 The high incidence of stroke creates greater need for caregivers than can be met solely by immediate family members. However, little research has explored how caregiver relationship to the stroke survivor may affect caregiver experiences. The purpose of this study is to explore differences in caregiver task difficulty, depressive symptoms, and life changes based on type of relationship to the stroke survivor.

 Methods:
 Stroke caregivers (N=175) recruited into an ongoing stroke caregiver intervention trial were categorized by relationship to survivor as spouse (n =79), adult child/in-law (n = 57), and other (n =39). Baseline data for task difficulty (Oberst Caregiving Burden Scale: OCBS); depressive symptoms (PHQ-9); and life changes (Bakas Caregiving Outcomes Scale: BCOS) comprised the dependent variables. Differences in means between relationship groups were analyzed using separate ANOVA models for each dependent variable.

 Results:
 Means for the 3 relationship groups were similar for all dependent measures. Task difficulty [F(2,172) = 1.00; p =.37], depressive symptoms [F(2,172) = .04; p =.96], and life changes [F(2,172) = .06; p =.94] all had non-statistically significant results.

 Conclusions:
 The type of caregiver relationship to the stroke survivor did not differ with respect to mean task difficulty, depressive symptoms, or life changes scores. While these groups were similar at baseline, evaluating whether relationship moderates response to intervention at later time points may provide further implications for targeted interventions based on type of relationship.


The objective of this article is to present a methodology for the estimation of the impact of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) on network efficiency and the environment. The methodology proposes a set of traffic and emissions simulation models, both microscopic and macroscopic. Issues relevant to the models are discussed, and the inputs to the methodology are presented, along with its expected outputs. An indicative application of the methodology is performed, where the traffic impact of the Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) system is tested in an urban network. The simulation results indicate that the impact of the introduction of Adaptive Cruise Control can be significant in the improvement of the traffic parameters for high system penetration levels and peak period traffic conditions.