To determine whether or not there is a real increase in cancer mortality we must compare cancer death rates for the same ages, since cancer is an old age disease. The effect of age distribution is so great that it is safe to say that any considerable increase in the proportion of the population at the older ages, for instance, the emigration of the young men and women, would cause a noticeable increase in the cancer deaths per 100,000 population, while an influx of young men and women would decrease them. Dr. Frederick L. Hoffman, statistician of the Prudential Life Insurance Company, in a paper on "The Menace of Cancer" published in 1913, and in his comprehensive book on "The Mortality from Cancer" published in 1915, has given the statistics available at the time of writing in a very complete form. These statistics were drawn both from the United States and abroad. From these I have selected a few. In the registration of 1900, the cancer death rate per 100,000 population, which will hereafter be spoken of as the cancer death rate or cancer mortality, increased from 63 in 1900 to 79 in 1913, an increase of over 25 per cent. England and Wales for the same period showed an increase from 83 to 105 and most other European states showed a very considerable increase. Going back forty years, the rate in twenty large American cities was 49 for the period 1881–1885; for 1913 it had increased to 89. In twelve European countries the rate was 69 for the period 1896–1900; for the period 1906–1910, it had increased to 81. These were general population statistics without subdivision by ages. There were also available, however, some extensive statistics subdivided by ages. The cancer death rate in the registration states of the United States of 1900 subdivided into ten-year age groups, 25–34, 35–44, etc., for 1901 compared with 1911 shows an increase in the rate for each age group for the later year, such increase being very considerable for ages above 45, which are the significant ages in cancer. Massachusetts, for the two periods 1901–1905 and 1906–1910, with a different distribution into age groups and subdivided by sexes, showed an increase for each adult group and for each sex separately, in the later period the increase again being very considerable for the older groups. While these are but a few of the statistics, they are illustrative of the trend of practically all, and, standing alone, would appear to indicate a great and rapid increase in cancer mortality. We have, however, later and very extensive statistics from two of the great insurance companies which are not in accord with the above.


To successfully design and engineer solutions for today's and tomorrow's rapidly changing and expanding global contexts, in which people are confronted with new opportunities and challenges each day, engineering programs should be training their students to become broad based professionals, who are aware of the actual needs, values and behaviors of the people that use their solutions in their everyday life, work or play. This paper argues that in order to built such an awareness, engineering students should acquire direct, first-hand experiences of real people in real contexts. It presents a number of techniques that can be used to gain such experiences. Each technique is briefly described and illustrated with examples from our Industrial Design Engineering program. Knowledge, skills and attitude that are acquired through the use of the techniques are listed and reflected upon. Finally, our experiences with implementing the techniques into our program are discussed in view of their relevance for other engineering programs.


In the past few years, the use of wireless sensor nodes for remote health care monitoring has been advocated as an attractive alternative to the traditional hospital-centric health care system from both the economic perspective and the patient comfort viewpoint. The semiconductor industry plays a crucial role in making the changes in the health care system a reality. User acceptance of remote health monitoring systems depends on their comfort level, among other factors. The comfort level directly translates to the form factor, which is ultimately defined by the battery size and system power consumption. This article introduces low-power wireless sensor nodes for biomedical applications that are capable of operating autonomously or on very small batteries. In particular, we take a closer look at component-level power optimizations for the radio and the digital signal processing core as well as the trade-off between radio power consumption and on-node processing. We also provide a system-level model for WSNs that helps in guiding the power optimization process with respect to various trade-offs.


Purpose: Chest wall and ribs are considered organs at risk while treating lung tumors adjacent to chest wall. This study was to evaluate the dosimetric differences in chest wall and ribs irradiation for Cyberknife stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) when treatment plans were computed using Ray Tracking Algorithm (RTA) and Monte Carlo Algorithm (MCA). Methods: Twenty eight lung cancer patients who had tumors abutting the chest wall were selected for this study. A uniform 2cm thickness of chest wall and appropriate portions of rib were contoured for evaluating dose distribution using RTA and MCA of Cyberknife MultiPlan software (version‐3.5.2). Treatment plans were first computed using RTA and then were recomputed using MCA without changing the total monitor unit (MU). Range of prescription dose was 50Gy‐60Gy (mean=54.6Gy). Studied dosimetric parameters were maximum point dose and doses to 1cc, 5cc, 10cc, 30cc, 50cc, 70cc, and 100cc of chest wall. Maximum point dose and doses to 1cc, 2cc, 5cc, and 10cc of ribs were also studied. These parameters were considered as clinically more relevant. Results: Dosimetric computation results revealed that RTA overestimated dose to both the chest wall and the ribs for all the studied parameters. Increase of average dose was in the range of 7.5–12.1% (p‐value 0.05), and 10.3–13.4% (p‐value <0.05) for chest wall and ribs, respectively. The lower the volume of interest, the larger was the difference in dose for the two algorithms. Average difference in maximum point dose for chest wall was 11.2% (p‐value <0.001) and that was 13.4% for ribs (p‐value <0.002). Conclusion: As compared to Monte Carlo algorithm, Ray Tracing algorithm significantly overestimates dose to chest wall and ribs. Although treatment planning with Monte Carlo is more involved, it should be used because of accuracy and significant difference in dose distribution in chest wall and ribs.


INTRODUCTION
Anaemia is the most common nutritional problem affecting children, adolescents and women. A systematic review was undertaken to find out the prevalence of anaemia and to identify the trend in the prevalence of anaemia in Kerala state, Southern India.

AIM
The aim of the review was to identify the prevalence of anaemia in Kerala and to comment on its trend across last 25 years.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
PubMed and google scholar searches and scanning of reference lists were used to identify studies. All population based studies on anaemia from Kerala, irrespective of its designs, published between Jan 1st 1990 to Dec 31st 2015 were included. Data extraction and quality assessment were carried out using structured proformas. Due to the heterogeneity of reviewed studies, meta-analysis was not done. A narrative approach was used.

RESULTS
A total of 10 studies in addition to two major survey reports- National Family Health Survey (NFHS) and District Level Household Survey (DLHS) were included in the final analysis. Prevalence of anaemia among adolescents from recent study reports was around 30% and prevalence of severe anaemia was less than 1% in all studies. Anaemia among tribal women and children were in the range of 78.3% to 96.5%. A key finding of this review was the paucity of data and inconsistency in haemoglobin estimation methods and population characteristics which made comparisons impossible.

CONCLUSION
The current prevalence of anaemia in Kerala is unclear. Though, there are many studies and reports regarding prevalence of anaemia in the state, those results could not be combined due to non uniform haemoglobin estimation methods. Standardised prospective study of general population including subgroups will be necessary.


Volume 1 The mandate for industrial policy: Part 1 The policy mandate: the idea of industrial policy, Chalmers Johnson industrial policy - a dissent, Charles L. Schultze industrial policy and American renewal, R.D. Norton industrial change, barriers to mobility and European industrial policy, Paul A. Geroski and Alexis Jacquemin some lessons from the East Asian miracle, Joseph E. Stiglitz. Part 2 Implementation: implementing a national technology strategy with self-organizing industry investment boards, Paul M. Romer procurement policy as a tool of industrial policy, P.A. Geroski the implementation of industrial policy in an evolutionary perspective, Alexander Gerybadze. Part 3 International competitiveness: making sense of the competitiveness debate, Paul R. Krugman industrial policy and international competitiveness, David B. Audretsch international R&D rivalry and industrial strategy, Barbara J. Spencer and James A. Brander. Part 4 Trade: trade and industrial policy under imperfect competition, Anthony J. Venables and Alasdair Smith optimal trade and industrial policy under oligopoly, Jonathan Eaton and Gene M. Grossman the welfare effects of imperfect harmonization of trade and industrial policy, Konstantine Gatsios and Larry Karp R&D rivalry, industrial policy and US-Japanese trade, David B. Audretsch and Hideki Yamawaki. Part 5 Foreign direct investment: industrial policy and foreign direct investment, Phedon Nicolaides. Part 6 Technology policy: does technology policy matter?, Henry Ergas technical innovation and national systems, Richard R. Nelson and Nathan Rosenberg strategic R&D policy, John Beath et al innovation policy in an open economy - a normative framework for strategic and tactical issues, Moshe Justman and Morris Teubal. Volume 2 Instruments and targets: Part 1 Competition policy: industrial policy and competition policy, Manfred Neumann the evolution of Clayton section 7 enforcement and the beginnings of US industrial policy, Bruce M. Owen antitrust law as industrial policy - should judges and juries make it?, Phillip Areeda international mergers and state aid - what should competition policy do about industrial policy?, A. Neil Campbell et al. Part 2 Networks and cooperation: competition, cooperation and innovation - organizational arrangements for regimes of rapid technological progress, David J. Teece when can government subsidize research joint ventures? politics, economics and limits to technology policy, Linda Cohen company-scientist locational links - the case of biotechnology, David B. Audretsch and Paula E. Stephan vertical relations between firms and industrial policy, P.A. Geroski a dynamic analysis of export cartels - the Japanese case, Alexis Jacquemin et al Europe - collaboration in the high technology sectors, Margaret Sharp. (Part contents)


ABSTRACT Xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) represents a novel γ-retrovirus that is capable of infecting human cells and has been classified as a biosafety level 2 (BSL-2) organism. Hence, XMRV represents a potential risk for personnel in laboratories worldwide. Here, we measured the stability of XMRV and its susceptibility to alcohol-based disinfectants. To this end, we exposed an infectious XMRV reporter virus encoding a secretable luciferase to different temperatures, pH values, and disinfectants and infected XMRV-permissive Raji B cells to measure residual viral infectivity. We found that 1 min treatment of XMRV particles at 60°C is sufficient to reduce infectivity by 99.9%. XMRV infectivity was maximal at a neutral pH but was reduced by 86% at pH 4 and 99.9% at pH 10. The common hand and surface disinfectants ethanol and isopropanol as well as the cell fixation reagent paraformaldehyde abrogated XMRV infectivity entirely, as indicated by a reduction of infectivity exceeding 99.99%. Our findings provide evidence of specific means to inactivate XMRV. Their application will help to prevent unintended XMRV contamination of cell cultures in laboratories and minimize the risk for laboratory personnel and health care workers to become infected with this biosafety level 2 organism.


Traditionally, omnidirectional, radio frequency (RF) communication has been made resistant to jamming by the use of a secret key that is shared by the sender and receiver. There are no known methods for achieving jam resistance without that shared key. Unfortunately, wireless communication is now reaching a scale and a level of importance where such secret-key systems are becoming impractical. For example, the civilian side of the global positioning system (GPS) cannot use a shared secret, since that secret would have to be given to all 6.5 billion potential users, and so would no longer be secret. So civilian GPS cannot currently be protected from jamming. But the FAA has stated that the civilian airline industry will transition to using GPS for all navigational aids, even during landings. A terrorist with a simple jamming system could wreak havoc at a major airport. No existing system can solve this problem, and the problem itself has not even been widely discussed. The problem of keyless jam resistance is important. There is a great need for a system that can broadcast messages without any prior secret shared between the sender and receiver. We propose the first system for keyless jam resistance: the BBC algorithm. We describe the encoding, decoding, and broadcast algorithms. We then analyze it for expected resistance to jamming and error rates. We show that BBC can achieve the same level of jam resistance as traditional spread spectrum systems, at just under half the bit rate, and with no shared secret. Furthermore, a hybrid system can achieve the same average bit rate as traditional systems.


What if we played the Rubik's cube game by simple intuition? We would rotate the cube, probably in the hope of getting a more organized pattern in each next step. Yet frustration occurs easily, and we soon find ourselves trapped as the game progresses no further. Played in this completely strategy-less style, the entire problem of the Rubik's cube game can be compared to that of complex chemical reactions such as protein folding, only with less guidance in the searching process. In this work we look into this random-searching process by means of thermodynamics and compare the game's dynamics with that of a faithful stochastic model constructed from the statistical energy landscape theory (SELT). This comparison reveals the peculiar nature of SELT, which relies on the random energy approximation and often chops up energy correlations among nearby configurations. Our observation provides a general insight for the use of SELT in the studies of these frustrated systems.


In integrating multi-isolated-word recognizers into a speech recognition for various stressed speeches, the best likelihood scores as outputs of each recognizer are not guaranteed a correct recognition result. Since training sometimes does not cover all speakers, likelihood score of the correct recognition result is not the best and causes misrecognition. Moreover, the difference among recognizers also leads to misunderstanding. This paper proposes a decision-making method for Thai stressed speech recognition with parallel hidden Markov model. In this method, a voting scheme is applied on the words with the N-best likelihood score. Firstly, if the score margin between the first and the second-best is greater than a threshold, the voting is applied on the words with highest scores from each recognizer. If there is no clear winner, decided by considering the voting score, the next best scores are included into the voting scheme. The process goes on until a winner is found or there is a tied score, in which case the average of the likelihood score of each tied word is used to decide the winner. The experiments were conducted with 4-stress speeches including Angry, Lombard, Loud, and Neutral. It showed that the proposed method helped increase the recognition rate to 96.545 % comparing with previous decision making techniques.


Abstract Western-derived formalistic economic models continue to pervade much of the discussion relating to the political and economic history of noncapitalist societies. The rise of complex societies across the world has been intimately tied to such economic variables. In North America, the emergence of Cahokia and other Mississippian chiefdoms is also often linked to these factors. Such models rely on the large-scale movement of materials between distant locales. Critical to these approaches is the demonstration that items identified as "exotic" are nonlocal. Only archaeometric analysis can make this determination. This paper continues our research in geologic sourcing through X-ray diffraction and spectroscopic analysis (Emerson and Hughes 2000). We examine red stone from the American Bottom that was identified macroscopically as catlinite and as part of the panregional Cahokia trade network. We prove that the Cahokian "catlinite," in fact, is not catlinite and is from one or more other possible sources. This proof demonstrates catlinite, at the earliest, entered the American Bottom with Oneota peoples in the fourteenth century, and more likely, with protohistoric or historic groups in the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries. This geologic sourcing research continues to cast doubt on the role and importance of large-scale, long-distance economic transactions in Cahokian history.


This paper considers the question how professional issues can be taught in an undergraduate environment where little academic experience is to be expected. It develops a theoretical framework which justifies the need for such teaching and indicates that codes of conduct can be a useful vehicle to address these issues. Given the constructivist teaching theory that was deemed appropriate for the subject, the paper proceeds to discuss the realisation of the teaching of professional standards in a HNC programme in a UK university. The paper discusses the result of the module and the strengths and weaknesses of the approach


Abstract Ammonium uranyl carbonate (AUC) production processes have effluents with a high uranium content (5 g/L), which is conventionally recovered by evaporation. In this study, an alternative process, recovery of uranium by strong anion exchange (AE) membranes is investigated. Solutions were modeled by MINTEQA2 for determining the species present. Laboratory scale AUC precipitations with three different C/U mole ratios were carried out using uranyl nitrate (UNH) feed solution from the pilot plant for the purpose of determining the remaining concentration of uranium in the effluents. Strongly basic AE membrane separations of these effluents were carried out, but separation was not effective because of the limited surface area of the membranes. Synthetic solutions of three different C/U mole ratios were prepared and passed through a column of strongly basic AE resin. Membrane separations were then carried out on the resulting solutions. Membrane separations proved to be effective only in dilute solutions of uranium. There was a complementarity between the AE resins and membranes for U(VI) recovery from carbonate solutions in that different uranyl carbonate anionic species were extracted to differing extents with the two procedures.


We analyze the DETR-based framework on semi-supervised object detection (SSOD) and observe that (1) the one-to-one assignment strategy generates incorrect matching when the pseudo ground-truth bounding box is inaccurate, leading to training inefficiency; (2) DETR-based detectors lack deterministic correspondence between the input query and its prediction output, which hinders the applicability of the consistency-based regularization widely used in current SSOD methods. We present Semi-DETR, the first transformer-based end-to-end semi-supervised object detector, to tackle these problems. Specifically, we propose a Stage-wise Hybrid Matching strategy that combines the one-to-many assignment and one-to-one assignment strategies to improve the training efficiency of the first stage and thus provide high-quality pseudo labels for the training of the second stage. Besides, we introduce a Cross-view Query Consistency method to learn the semantic feature invariance of object queries from different views while avoiding the need to find deterministic query correspondence. Furthermore, we propose a Cost-based Pseudo Label Mining module to dynamically mine more pseudo boxes based on the matching cost of pseudo ground truth bounding boxes for consistency training. Extensive experiments on all SSOD settings of both COCO and Pascal VOC benchmark datasets show that our Semi-DETR method outperforms all state-of-the-art methods by clear margins.


Two cases studies illustrate the paradox at the heart of the substantive law of sexual assault – that it is possible (i) for a woman who does not communicate her consent to be deemed to consent; and (ii) for a defendant to have a reasonable belief about a woman's consent even though it is accepted that she did not consent, both of which undermine the concept of her sexual autonomy. In light of the research on rape myth acceptance ('RMA') which shows that RMA is one of the most consistent predictors of victim blame in sexual assault scenarios, this article discusses how sexual assault law reform in New South Wales in 2007, which introduced a 'communicative' model of consent, has been subsequently undermined by the decisions in two recent judge-alone trials. Options for reform are discussed in light of the community standards expected under a 'communicative' model of consent.


This paper presents a non-contact method for making relative measurements of the resistance of surface mounted resistors. An application of this technique is in automatic test equipment, i.e. within the limitations of resolution and accuracy of the measuring system it is possible to detect if incorrect resistor values are mounted on a printed board assembly. Measurements are made on two specially designed test boards. Two different measurement systems are used of which one is based on thermopiles and the other is a heat camera equipped with a QWIP (Quantum Well Intersubband Photodetector) detector. The detection of a minimum change of resistance, corresponding to a change of approximately 5 mW in' dissipated electrical power, was achieved. Simulations of resistor board systems using; THERMIC 6.6, THERMICPCB 6.6, and Flotherm 3.2; and a dissipation power model are presented as a demonstration of predictions of the thermal fingerprint of a circuit board.


Although the importance of reading in higher education as an index of success has been highlighted, the metacognitive knowledge or beliefs of graduate students have remained under-researched. This qualitative study reports on a study that, first, examines how graduate students of applied linguistics conceive of academic reading and academic readers in their graduate programs; second, what factors they believe can contribute to the development of those self-conceptions; and, third, if there was the possibility of adding a course on academic reading to their MA programs, how they would judge the advantages and disadvantages of such a course. In so doing, in-depth interviews were conducted with 31 graduate students at eight different universities. The findings revealed considerable changes in the participants' conceptions as the result of taking part in their graduate programs. They attributed those self-conceptions to their efforts and struggles as well as their teachers' help and guidance. Their perceptions of an academic reading course were positive. Pedagogical implications are discussed.


Low-energy transport measurements in quantum Hall systems have been argued to be governed by emergent
modular symmetries whose predictions are robust against many of the detailed microscopic dynamics. We
propose the recently observed quantum Hall effect in graphene as a test of these ideas, and identify to this end
a class of predictions for graphene which would follow from the same modular arguments. We are led to a suite
of predictions for high-mobility samples that differs from those obtained for the conventional quantum Hall
effect in semiconductors, including predictions for the locations of the quantum Hall plateaus, predictions for
the positions of critical points on transitions between plateaus, a selection rule for which plateaus can be
connected by low-temperature transitions and a semicircle law for conductivities traversed during these transitions.
Many of these predictions appear to provide a good description of graphene measurements performed
with intermediate-strength magnetic fields.


Approximating the locations and lateral boundaries of anomalous bodies (i.e. geological structures or contacts) is an important task in the interpretation of gravity field data. Edge-approximating algorithms based on the computation of directional derivatives are widely used for enhancing the gravity anomalies of the source bodies. These algorithms effectively aid geological mapping and interpretation by locating abrupt lateral changes in density, and may also bring out subtle details in the data without specifying any prior information about the nature and type of the sources. Therefore, some model parameters of source bodies may be estimated in this way, which may guide the inverse modelling procedure. In this paper we aim to review the effectiveness of the commonly used edge-approximating algorithms such as vertical derivative, total horizontal derivative, analytic signal, profile curvature, tilt angle and theta map in terms of their accuracy on the determination of locations and lateral boundaries of source bodies. These detections were performed on both noise-free and noisy synthetic gravity data. Additionally, a real gravity data set from a well-known geological setting, the Aegean graben system (western Turkey), was considered and the derived anomaly maps were compared with known mapped geology.


: As Internet-based and other virtual technologies are being used more and more for procurement, supply chain management, product development, customer relations, and other business functions, and as they are proving to be efficacious, e-business has undoubtedly become an integral element in the business and engineering strategies of many automakers and suppliers. What e-business can provide to an automotive cooperation has been well stated for improving product quality, reducing costs, and shortening time-to-market cycles. In this paper, Renault Australia is used as an example of where the automobile industry is currently positioned in relation to E-Business. Online WebGIS-based Marketing Support System, developed as a portal e-business model, is designed to assistant information and knowledge exchange between the market analysis business and decision makers (and sales people) in auto industry. Incorporating marketing information gives rise to a better understanding of the potential of particular market areas or target markets, and helps identify the strengths and weaknesses of the competition in particular market areas or among particular target market segments. Such market analysis strategies obviously provide competitive advantages. Sharing information and obtaining market analysis outcomes through the Web will provide business decision makers with up to date information and knowledge. This solution will not only reduce costs for business planning, but also help to avoid the cost of wrong decisions.


Most investigations into the perceptual relevance of vowel duration have employed patterns of synthetic speech in which only the steady-state portions of syllables have been used as the variable. The experiments reported here were designed to discover if CV transitions are also included by the listener in determining the effective duration of the "vowel." More specifically, they measured the contribution of syllable-initial formant transitions to that "vowel" duration on which the voicing of a stop in syllable-final position can be made to depend. It is clear from the results that the syllable-initial transitions do contribute to that duration; indeed, they appear to contribute to the same degree as an equal duration of steady-state. Apparently, the effective duration of a vowel extends over all parts of the acoustic signal that may be said to have been influenced by it, including especially the transitions that reflect the consequences of the coarticulation of vowel and consonant.


In this paper, we propose a neural network for solving a class of convex quadratic minimax problems with constraints. Four sufficient conditions are provided to ensure the asymptotic stability of the proposed network. Furthermore, the exponential stability of the proposing network is also proved under certain conditions. The results obtained here can be further extended to the globally projected dynamical system. In addition, some new stability conditions for the system are also obtained. Since our stability conditions can be easily checked in practice, these results becomes more attractive in real applications.


Plants produce a variety of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Under abiotic and biotic stresses, the number and amount of produced compounds can increase. Due to their long life span and large size, trees can produce biogenic VOCs (BVOCs) in much higher amounts than many other plants. It has been suggested that at cellular and tree physiological levels, induced production of VOCs is aimed at improving plant resistance to damage by reactive oxygen species generated by multiple abiotic stresses. In the few reported cases when biosynthesis of plant volatiles is inhibited or enhanced, the observed response to stress can be attributed to plant volatiles. Reported increase, e.g., in photosynthesis has mostly ranged between 5 and 50%. A comprehensive model to explain similar induction of VOCs under multiple biotic stresses is not yet available. As a result of pathogen or herbivore attack on forest trees, the induced production of VOCs is localized to the damage site but systemic induction of emissions has also been detected. These volatiles can affect fungal pathogens and the arrival rate of herbivorous insects on damaged trees, but also act as signalling compounds to maintain the trophic cascades that may improve tree fitness by improved efficiency of herbivore natural enemies. On the forest scale, biotic induction of VOC synthesis and release leads to an amplified flow of BVOCs in atmospheric reactions, which in atmospheres rich in oxides of nitrogen (NOx) results in ozone formation, and in low NOx atmospheres results in oxidation of VOCs, removal in ozone from the troposphere and the resulting formation of biogenic secondary organic aerosol (SOA) particles. I will summarize recent advances in the understanding of stress-induced VOC emissions from trees, with special focus on Populus spp. Particular importance is given to the ecological and atmospheric feedback systems based on BVOCs and biogenic SOA formation.


In the packaging sector of the printing industry, different coating applications are tried and investigated in order to increase the surface appearance and performance characteristics of paper and cardboard. The printability, water and ink absorption capacity, frictional resistance, light sensitivity of the visual graphical design that are going to be printed on the packaging papers are some of them. In this study, different types of cardboards that are used as a packaging material were chosen and coated with nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC)/PVA at different rates (%). In order to determine effective and economical usage conditions, the coating solutions, at three different concentrations as 3 wt.%, 5 wt. %, 7 wt.%, were prepared. The coating was applied on the test papers, which were at the same weights (350 g/m2) and had different surface properties as matte glossy, bright glossy, American Bristol. NCC/PVA existence on the coated paper surface was confirmed with Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR). The impact of the coating, which was prepared at different concentrations, on the packaging materials was studied with respect to thickness, stiffness, water absorbability, contact angle and surface tension.


This paper examines how national migration policies and country-specific factors in receiving countries attend to a potential highly-skilled migrant when one is deciding among several possible locations. While continental European countries recognize the need to attract migrants as a key component of their economic strategies, it remained unclear to what extent the more open immigration policies led to actually increase the attractiveness of European countries to perform better at the global competition for the highly-skilled. The survey among prospective migrants in India shows that while European countries appear to be relatively attractive for study purposes, they are not perceived equally attractive as a place for a long-term stay. To overcome the risks and pick Europe as a destination, more resources and skills are necessary than for traditional immigration countries; be it in terms of existing networks abroad, higher educational level or better language skills. With less long-term migration initiatives to Europe, immigration policies and destination country-specific factors, chances to obtain citizenship and amenities of local environment become less relevant. European governments place considerable effort on integration of student migration as a part of a wider immigration strategy. This strategy is likely to prove ineffective if "probationary migrants" clearly do not see European countries as prospective work destination for the period after their graduation.


Military operational requirements for data bandwidths are increasingly demanding rates which exceed the capacity of traditional HF circuits. New waveform standards, Mil-Std 188-IIOB and STANAG 4539, alleviate the problem to some degree by increasing user data rates from 2400 bps to 9600 bps. However, these rates still fall far short of the rates obtained with other media, with the result that HF is often not considered for use as a primary communications bearer. Often HF is not even considered in a secondary capacity and is used only as a communications medium of last resort. Increasing HF data rates to 64 kbps or beyond, using multiple channels in the manner proposed in this paper, would dramatically widen the applications for which HF could be considered as a primary mode of communications.


OBJECTIVE
To review strategies of multinational tobacco companies aimed at keeping tobacco products affordable to smokers in Hungary and to provide background information on the Hungarian request for the delayed introduction of minimum European Union tobacco excise duty levels.

METHOD
Review of internal tobacco industry documents available on the World Wide Web, downloaded between 26 July 2001 and 31 October 2002.

CONCLUSIONS
Appropriate pricing strategies and lobbying for low tobacco tax policies were used by the tobacco industry in Hungary to keep cigarettes affordable to the public. During the 1990s and in the early 2000s transnational tobacco companies (TTCs) were still able to prevent substantial cigarette price rises, which would have been desirable for more effective control of Hungarian tobacco use. Strategies used by TTCs included the creation of new partnerships, use of supportive MPs, communication around tobacco tax issues and also the successful management of the differences in approaches used by individual companies regarding taxation of tobacco products. These resulted in the adoption of governmental policy aimed at delaying the introduction of the EU directive on the minimum tax levels of retail prices of cigarettes.


Background
No investigation has assessed frailty in the clinical setting of thermal/spa facilities, which often receive older patients with osteo-articular and musculoskeletal conditions.

Objective
To examine the prevalence of frailty in older adults receiving thermal/spa treatment and to gather preliminary evidence about the feasibility of integrating geriatric assessments, including frailty, in the routine clinical consultations in spa facilities.

Methods
Mixed design, with a quantitative cross-sectional investigation performed among 197 volunteer patients (mean age 73.2 ± 6.4 years-old; 82.2% women) of seven French thermal/spa facilities and a qualitative investigation (semi-structured interviews) with the nine physicians working in the participating facilities. Frailty was defined according to a modified Fried frailty phenotype based on six self-reported criteria (including mobility impairment, nutritional status, and fatigue): individuals meeting ≥3 criteria were considered frail; 1-2 criteria, pre-frail; no criterion, robust. Interviews with the participating physicians on the feasibility of integrating geriatric assessments in routine clinical consultations at spa facilities were recorded and their content, analyzed.

Results
Frailty was detected in 112 individuals (56.9%), 26 (13.2%) were considered prefrail, and 59 (29.9%), robust. Regarding the interviews, three physicians indicated the geriatric assessments could be integrated in the routine spa consultations; two, in the consultations of specific/targeted patients, but not in routine; two, only in the context of health education; two, in the context of research protocols. The content of interviews highlighted geriatric assessments provided a better overview of the health/clinical status of the patients.

Conclusion
Frailty is very prevalent in older patients of spa facilities. Such facilities may constitute an interesting clinical setting for screening for frailty through the implementation of geriatric assessments.


We study the nucleation of a bubble in a metastable Lennard-Jones (LJ) fluid, confined to a spherical pore with wetting walls, by a combination of grand canonical, canonical ensemble, and gauge cell Monte Carlo simulation methods complemented by the Voronoi-Delaunay tessellation analysis of statistical geometry of intermolecular cavities. We construct the isotherm of confined fluid in the form of a continuous van der Waals' loop, in which the unstable backward trajectory between the spinodals corresponds to bubble states. We show that as the degree of metastability increases and the fluid becomes progressively stretched, the decrease of fluid density is associated with the evolution of a population of interstitial intermolecular cavities. At the spinodal, the fluid becomes mechanically unstable: Interstitial cavities partly coalesce into a larger cavity located due to the system symmetry around the pore center. This cavity represents a bubble embryo, which grows at the expense of interstitial cavities. The nucleation barrier is calculated by direct thermodynamic integration along the isotherm. We compare our simulation results to the predictions of the classical nucleation theory and experiments on capillary condensation-evaporation of nitrogen in pores of hybrid organic-inorganic mesoporous molecular sieve HMM-3.


AIM
This study aimed (a) to assess whether smoking reduces anxiety when paired with a pleasant distractor and (b) to investigate the effect of smoking a cigarette on cognitive performance in non-deprived smokers.

DESIGN
Participants were allocated randomly to four conditions in a 2 x 2 factorial design: 1, Smoke + Distractor; 2, Smoke + No Distractor; 3, No Smoke + Distractor; 4, No Smoke + No Distractor.

SETTING
University psychology department (University of Surrey, UK).

PARTICIPANTS
Forty-five volunteer cigarette smokers (mean consumption = 16 cigarettes per day) allowed to smoke normally prior to the study.

INTERVENTION
Participants were either allowed to smoke a cigarette of their choice in a manner of their choosing or not allowed to smoke, either with or without a concurrent distractor (a music video).

MEASUREMENTS
Rapid Visual Information Processing (RVIP) performance was measured via computer before and after a 10-minute break (during which the interventions took place). Mood was measured by (a) State Anxiety Inventory (SAI) and (b) Feeling State Questionnaire (FSQ), before and after the first RVIP task and then immediately after the break/cigarette.

FINDINGS
The RVIP task produced a significant increase in both measures of anxiety (SAI and FSQ stress subscale). Smoking, when paired with a distractor, did not decrease anxiety compared with when no distractor was present. Furthermore, smoking did not decrease anxiety or increase attentional (RVIP) performance compared with not smoking.

CONCLUSION
The findings of this study failed to support the idea that smoking has anxiety-reducing or attention-enhancing properties in non-abstinent smokers.


The ageing process is actively regulated throughout an organism's life, but studying the rate of ageing in individuals is difficult with conventional methods. Consequently, ageing studies typically make biological inference based on population mortality rates, which often do not accurately reflect the probabilities of death at the individual level. To study the relationship between individual and population mortality rates, we integrated in vivo switch experiments with in silico stochastic simulations to elucidate how carefully designed experiments allow key aspects of individual ageing to be deduced from group mortality measurements. As our case study, we used the recent report demonstrating that pheromones of the opposite sex decrease lifespan in Drosophila melanogaster by reversibly increasing population mortality rates. We showed that the population mortality reversal following pheromone removal was almost surely occurring in individuals, albeit more slowly than suggested by population measures. Furthermore, heterogeneity among individuals due to the inherent stochasticity of behavioural interactions skewed population mortality rates in middle-age away from the individual-level trajectories of which they are comprised. This article exemplifies how computational models function as important predictive tools for designing wet-laboratory experiments to use population mortality rates to understand how genetic and environmental manipulations affect ageing in the individual.


Milk fatty acids secreted by the mammary gland are one of the most important determinants of the nutritional value of goat milk. Unlike cow milk, limited data are available on the transcriptome-wide changes across stages of lactation in dairy goats. In this study, goat mammary gland tissue collected at peak lactation, cessation of milking, and involution were analyzed with digital gene expression (DGE) sequencing to generate longitudinal transcript profiles. A total of 51,299 unigenes were identified and further annotated to 12,763 genes, of which 9,131 were differentially expressed across various stages of lactation. Most abundant genes and differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were functionally classified through clusters of euKaryotic Orthologous Groups (KOG), Gene Ontology (GO), and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) databases. A total of 16 possible expression patterns were uncovered, and 13 genes were deemed novel candidates for regulation of lactation in the goat: POLG, SPTA1, KLC, GIT2, COPS3, PDP, CD31, USP16/29/37, TLL1, NCAPH, ABI2, DNAJC4, and MAPK8IP3. In addition, PLA2, CPT1, PLD, GGA, SRPRB, and AP4S1 are proposed as novel and promising candidates regulating mammary fatty acid metabolism. "Butirosin and neomycin biosynthesis" and "Glyoxylate and dicarboxylate metabolism" were the most impacted pathways, and revealed novel metabolic alterations in lipid metabolism as lactation progressed. Overall, the present study provides new insights into the synthesis and metabolism of fatty acids and lipid species in the mammary gland along with more detailed information on molecular regulation of lactogenesis. The major findings will benefit efforts to further improve milk quality in dairy goats.


Marine prey and predators will respond to future climate through physiological and behavioral adjustments. However, our understanding of how such direct effects may shift the outcome of predator–prey interactions is still limited. Here, we investigate the effects of ocean warming and acidification on foraging behavior and biomass of a common prey (shrimps, Palaemon spp.) tested in large mesocosms harboring natural resources and habitats. Acidification did not alter foraging behavior in prey. Under warming, however, prey showed riskier behavior by foraging more actively and for longer time periods, even in the presence of a live predator. No effects of longer-term exposure to climate stressors were detected on prey biomass. Our findings suggest that ocean warming may increase the availability of some prey to predators via a behavioral pathway (i.e., increased risk-taking by prey), likely by elevating metabolic demand of prey species.


Transnational movements of academics shape the production and dissemination of knowledge and thus the geographies of contemporary knowledge economies. In this paper, I investigate the complex relationship between knowledge production and spatial movement by examining three key aspects of academic mobility to Germany in the period 1981 to 2000: first, global patterns of interaction, second, motivations to work in Germany for a limited period of time and, third, resulting publications and collaborations. The study is based on two sets of statistical data and a postal survey involving about 1200 respondents from 90 countries. I argue that the motivations for and outcomes of transnational academic mobility are not only shaped by a great variety of influences that constitute society, academia and the individual but also by varying spatial relations of different research practices, which help to explain typical cultures of academic mobility and collaboration. Drawing upon an actor-network based understanding of both the natural and technical sciences and the arts and humanities, a three-dimensional matrix is developed that conceptualises varying spatial relations of scientific practice and interaction in different fields and at different stages of knowledge production.


Research experiences for undergraduates (REUs) seek to increase the participating students' knowledge and perceptions of scientific research through engagement in laboratory research and related activities. Various REU outcomes have been investigated including influence on participants' content knowledge, career plans, and general perceptions of their domains of research. The complexity of REUs and dynamic nature of student development provide opportunity for exploring how REUs influence student growth. Our research focused on first- and second-year college students who participated in a residential REU program that took place in a chemistry department in a metropolitan university in the western United States. We assessed the standard REU outcomes and sought to document the emotions the student experienced through their participation. In addition, we used the developmental framework of self-authorship (Baxter-Magolda, 2004) as a lens to investigate the participants' professional identity development. Our mixed methods research revealed shifts in the participants' perceptions of science, increases in their knowledge of chemistry, and clarity in their career trajectories. We also found that the REU participants experienced profound levels of professional identity growth and used a number of affective terms, such as confidence, persistence, patience, and enjoyment, to describe their experience. Interpretations and implications are discussed.


As traditional mass media grapple with hyper-competition globally with the attendant challenges of web-based alternatives and loss of readership and revenue, they are migrating online for survival in line with the contemporary management models. In Nigeria, it is not certain how they are adjusting to these new realities. This study examines the income-generation profiles of online news media in the country within the context of the technological determinism and mediamorphosis theories. Contents from 183 publishers were analyzed while four respondents were interviewed. Findings show that the websites generate revenue from advertising, online sales, downloadable content, subscription, syndication, sponsoring of links and affiliate marketing. Banner advertising was the most widespread (available on over 47% of the websites) while the advertisement billing trend appears flexible and partly compensates for offline losses. These findings indicate that the search for alternative sources of revenue in the digital environment is yielding results. To sustain revenue generation and evolve more income streams, publishers should deploy more resources to website optimization as well as online syndication and collaboration.


Especially for cannabinoids, analytical procedures for the verification of recent use and generally for the assessment of the extent of drug abuse are of interest in clinical and forensic toxicology. For confirmation of abstinence, urine analysis seems to be a useful tool. Serial monitoring of THC-COOH to creatinine ratios can differentiate between recent drug use and residual THC-COOH excretion (THC-COOH/creatinine ratio ≥0.5 compared with previous specimen ratio). For an assessment of the extent of cannabis use, the determination of free and bound THC-COOH and especially of THC and 11-OH-THC glucuronides are suggested as useful but need further confirmation. Blood analysis is preferred for the interpretation of acute effects after cannabis abuse. The cannabis influence factor (CIF) was demonstrated as a better tool to interpret the concentrations of THC and its metabolites in blood in forensic cases and therefore it was proposed to assume absolute driving inability because of cannabis intoxication from a CIF ≥10. Additionally, a higher CIF is indicative of a recent cannabis abuse. Also discrimination between occasional use of cannabis and regular drug consumption is possible by analysis of THC-COOH in blood samples because of the long plasma half-life of THC-COOH and its accumulation in the blood of frequent cannabis consumers. In routine tests, blood samples have to be taken within a prescribed 8-day-period, and a THC-COOH concentration >75 ng/mL is assumed to be associated with regular consumption of cannabis products, whereas plasma THC-COOH concentrations <5 ng/mL are associated with occasional consumption. In contrast to other illicit drugs, hair analysis lacks the sensitivity to act as a detector for cannabinoids. THC and especially the main metabolite THC-COOH have a very low incorporation rate into hair and THC is not highly bound to melanin, resulting in much lower concentrations in hair compared with other drugs. Additionally, THC is present in cannabis smoke and also can be incorporated into the hair only by contamination. For the determination of the main metabolite THC-COOH in the picogram or femtogram per milligram range, which indicates an active consumption, special analytical procedures, such as GC/MS/MS techniques, are required.


A central pillar of contemporary communication research is the analysis of filmed interactions between people. The techniques employed in such analysis first took on a recognizably modern form in the 1970s, but their roots go back to the earliest days of motion picture technology in the late nineteenth century. This book presents original essays accompanied by written responses which together create a dialogue exploring early efforts at audio-visual sequence analysis and their common goal to capture the "whole" of the communicative situation.
The first three chapters of this volume look at the film-based research of Gestalt psychologists in Berlin as well as psychologists in the orbit of Karl and Charlotte Buhler in Vienna in the first decades of the twentieth century. Most of these figures – along with many other Central European scholars of this era – were driven into exile in the United States after the rise of National Socialism in the 1930s. This scientific migration led to the cross-pollination of communication studies in America, an outcome visible in the leading project in interaction research of the mid-twentieth century, the Natural History of an Interview. The following two chapters examine this project in its historical context. The volume closes with a critical edition of a treasure from the archives: the transcript of a speech delivered by Ray Birdwhistell, a key participant in the Natural History of an Interview project and founder of kinesics.


As long as people have played games, there has been a temptation to win (or intentionally lose) by cheating. Infamous cases throughout the history of sport abound, from the "thrown" 1919 World Series to the recent doping confessions of track star Marion Jones. In this entertaining and informative book, sports historian Fran Zimniuch recalls the notorious scandals that have tainted our most popular sports, concluding that such incidents are often a reflection of the times. Benefiting from personal interviews with many figures either involved in or on the periphery of recent scandals, including BALCO's Victor Conte, Crooked presents a pageant of infamy as rich as the history of modern sports itself.


In this paper, we shall study contractive and pointwise contractive Banach function algebras, in which each maximal modular ideal has a contractive or pointwise contractive approximate identity, respectively, and we shall seek to characterize these al- gebras. We shall give many examples, including uniform algebras, that distinguish between contractive and pointwise contractive Banach function algebras. We shall describe a con- tractive Banach function algebra which is not equivalent to a uniform algebra. We shall also obtain results about Banach sequence algebras and Banach function algebras that are ideals in their second duals.


Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) can develop after an antecedent myeloid malignancy (secondary AML [s-AML]), after leukemogenic therapy (therapy-related AML [t-AML]), or without an identifiable prodrome or known exposure (de novo AML). The genetic basis of these distinct pathways of AML development has not been determined. We performed targeted mutational analysis of 194 patients with rigorously defined s-AML or t-AML and 105 unselected AML patients. The presence of a mutation in SRSF2, SF3B1, U2AF1, ZRSR2, ASXL1, EZH2, BCOR, or STAG2 was >95% specific for the diagnosis of s-AML. Analysis of serial samples from individual patients revealed that these mutations occur early in leukemogenesis and often persist in clonal remissions. In t-AML and elderly de novo AML populations, these alterations define a distinct genetic subtype that shares clinicopathologic properties with clinically confirmed s-AML and highlights a subset of patients with worse clinical outcomes, including a lower complete remission rate, more frequent reinduction, and decreased event-free survival. This trial was registered at www.clinicaltrials.gov as #NCT00715637.


Methodical approaches to the investment climate evaluation have been formed. Methodological tools for assessing the investment attractiveness of the economy have been classified. To create a database to select the most important methods of assessment of the investment climate should undertake a comparative analysis on the target group of potential investors, the depth of research, the frequency of assessment of the investment climate, purpose assessment of the investment climate. International ratings are effective tools that help reduction information asymmetry, and a large number of methods of ranking permit the investor to receive information on all aspects of the investment attractiveness of the state. Rankings are shaping the image of the state, and ignoring the results of the ratings can lead to financial isolation of the state. Information on the methodology of the ratings in most cases is transparent, so the domestic state institutions have the ability to affect the future results of the ratings in the case of related reforms. However, there is no unified model of investment climate evaluation of the national economy, which directly affects the state of the investment climate of Ukraine's economy and the volume of foreign capital in the state. Rating evaluation of the investment climate for the Ukrainian economy has been offered.


Robotic radical prostatectomy is fast getting popular as an alternative to the open and laparoscopic radical prostatectomy. Planning for port placement and the assistant's role are the two crucial yardsticks for the success of this procedure. Ideal port placement for radical robotic prostatectomy is not only crucial for the surgeon at the console but also for the patient side assistant. A better assistance could enhance the functional outcome of the procedure and at the same time could increase the comfort level of the surgeon at the console. This article describes the role of an assistant in robotic radical prostatectomy.


Traditionally, differential privacy mechanism design has been tailored for a scalar-valued query function. Although many mechanisms such as the Laplace and Gaussian mechanisms can be extended to a matrix-valued query function by adding i.i.d. noise to each element of the matrix, this method is often sub-optimal as it forfeits an opportunity to exploit the structural characteristics typically associated with matrix analysis. In this work, we consider the design of differential privacy mechanism specifically for a matrix-valued query function. The proposed solution is to utilize a matrix-variate noise, as opposed to the traditional scalar-valued noise. Particularly, we propose a novel differential privacy mechanism called the Matrix-Variate Gaussian (MVG) mechanism, which adds a matrix-valued noise drawn from a matrix-variate Gaussian distribution. We prove that the MVG mechanism preserves $(\epsilon,\delta)$-differential privacy, and show that it allows the structural characteristics of the matrix-valued query function to naturally be exploited. Furthermore, due to the multi-dimensional nature of the MVG mechanism and the matrix-valued query, we introduce the concept of directional noise, which can be utilized to mitigate the impact the noise has on the utility of the query. Finally, we demonstrate the performance of the MVG mechanism and the advantages of directional noise using three matrix-valued queries on three privacy-sensitive datasets. We find that the MVG mechanism notably outperforms four previous state-of-the-art approaches, and provides comparable utility to the non-private baseline. Our work thus presents a promising prospect for both future research and implementation of differential privacy for matrix-valued query functions.


Originally written as a curatorial essay for the international architectural exhibition "Non Standard Architectures" at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2002-2003), this paper discusses the formal and epistemic implications of the advent of this new paradigm (1). The non standard inscribes itself within the realm of contemporary architectural experimentations making extensive use of recent computational design technologies and its formal catalogue is marked by highly complex dynamic forms that indicate a revival of the organic tradition. The paper recasts this recent organicism in historical continuity with the early modern organic tradition, in order to highlight and reassess this formal tradition resurfacing today. Early modernist and non standard instances of the organic lineage show a remarkable formal reminiscence which conceals however significant epistemological, perceptual, geometric/mathematical and technological distinctions. The paper discusses this reminiscence in terms of a powerful 'gestalt switch' which is both perceptual and epistemic. The modernist mechanic-organic debate is hence revisited in terms of a basic epistemological distinction which invariably associates intelligibility in formal processes with stability and identity, as displayed in typical, standardized forms, while organic formal processes are defined as individualistic, subjectivist, intuitionist processes that escape systematic analysis and rationalization. The debate invariably records a negative anchorage of the organic in modernist thinking, as a counter-modern instrument denouncing mechanic normativity or standardization.


Non steroid anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are largely used for treatment of acute and chronic pain, even for long periods of time (months or years). While it is known that their use is frequently associated with gastrointestinal damage, including major bleedings from peptic ulcer, the risk of cardiovascular events related to NSAID has received much less attention. However, there is a large body of evidence showing that NSAIDs (both "traditional", such as diclofenac or indobufen, and selective cyclooxygenase inhibitors, COX-2) are associated with a significant increase of risk of cardiovascular events, both fatal and nonfatal. Consequently, several options have been proposed for the treatment of pain, including the use of analgesic drugs with different mechanisms of action, such as the opiates. Of interest, the Italian Drug Agency (AIFA) published a few years ago a warning (Nota 66) on the careful prescription of NSAIDs in patients with overt heart disease, such as coronary artery disease and heart failure. Aim of this paper is to present the current status of knowledge on the proper use of NSAIDs and other analgesic drugs in the management of acute and chronic pain.


The fish body is entirely covered by a thin, smooth and glandular epidermis, closely attached to the scales inserted on the dermis. The descriptive work on this tissue dates to twenty or thirty years ago, bears very little photographic record and does not focus on the scale epithelium, despite the fact that it is in direct contact with the environment. Thereupon, the present study characterizes the scale epithelium of Prochilodus lineatus, a robust species of fish. The observations show that the scale is completely covered by epithelium thicker on the proximal end of the scale, multilayered on the dorsal surface and undifferentiated on the ventral surface, and covered by mucous producing cells, mostly acid mucous. The scale is formed by plywood-like collagen matrix of collagen type III and supported by a network of elastic fibers on the ventral face. Differentiated cellular types are present, such as club cells, considered to be responsible for the release of alarm substances, which suggests possible use in environmental assessment as a non-invasive technique.


Vasculogenic ulcers may be of arterial, venous or arteriovenous (mixed) origin and compromise the dermis and epidermis, and may also affect deeper tissues, characterized by a chronic, painful and slow healing process, which impacts the quality of life and in the mental, physical and social aspects of the affected persons, thus leading them to the total dependence of the health service. The objective was to characterize the sociodemographic and clinical profile of patients with vasculogenic ulcers. This is a cross-sectional descriptive study developed at the Surgical Clinic in an Emergency Hospital in the Northeastern region of Brazil, with 38 patients with vasculogenic ulcers, from September to October 2016. Data were collected in patients' records and confirmed by interview. As a result of the sociodemographic profile, the majority were male (55.3%), brown (55.3%), elderly and adult (50%, each), married (50%), with income up to a minimum wage (81.6%), retirees (55.3%), attended the elementary school (57.9%) and all were from the Northeastern region of Brazil. Clinically, 34.2% had peripheral angiopathy, venous ulcers (50%), Arterial Hypertension and Diabetes Melitus (50%). The most frequent surgical procedure was amputation of the limb affected by the ulcer (55.3%). Knowing the profile of the clientele is fundamental for making better decisions and defining a clinical reasoning more appropriate to patients, which should be conducted in a comprehensive manner by the nursing team.


The simulation models of wireless networks rapidly increase in complexity to accurately model wireless channel characteristics and the properties of advanced transmission technologies. Such detailed models typically lead to a high computational load per simulation event that accumulates to extensive simulation runtimes. Reducing runtimes through parallelization is challenging since it depends on detecting causally independent events that can execute concurrently. Most existing approaches base this detection on lookaheads derived from channel propagation latency or protocol characteristics. In wireless networks, these lookaheads are typically short, causing the potential for parallelization and the achievable speedup to remain small. This paper presents Horizon, which unlocks a substantial portion of a simulation model's workload for parallelization by going beyond the traditional lookahead. We show how to augment discrete events with durations to identify a much larger horizon of independent simulation events and efficiently schedule them on multi-core systems. Our evaluation shows that this approach can significantly cut down the runtime of simulations, in particular for complex and accurate models of wireless networks.


Developing model-based automatic debugging strategies has been an active research area for several years. We analyze shortcomings of previous modeling approaches when dealing with objectoriented languages and present a revised modeling approach. We employ Abstract Interpretation, a technique borrowed from program analysis, to improve the debugging of programs including loops, recursive procedures, and heap data structures. Together with heuristic model refinement, our approach delivers superior results than the previous models. The principle of our approach is demonstrated on a set of examples.


What links Stowe's Uncle Tom Cabin (1852) , the Quebecois writer and translator Pamphile Lemay (1865), the white Louisiana Creole Sidonie de la Houssaye's novel Pouponne et Balthazar (1885), a tourist guide inviting Bostonian to visit a "Land" in Nova Scotia (1894), the Cadian Louisiana judge and writer Felix de Voohries (1907), the first Canadian (and lost) feature film (1913), the role played by Dolores del Rio in a Carewe's feature film (1929), two statues erected in tiny villages distant of thousands of miles – namely Grand-Pre in Nova Scotia and St-Martinville in Louisiana -, the only opera authored by Otto Luening (1932), William Faulkner's Absalom Absalom! (1936), the Acadian writer Antonine Maillet - first non-French winner of the prestigious literary Goncourt award (1979), a newspaper that was during almost a century the only daily French newspaper in the Canadian Maritime Provinces (1885-1981), several museums in Canada and Louisiana, thousands of personal or institutional web pages and, more trivially, some soda, chocolate, coffee and bread brands? The link between the elements of this heteroclite list is a fictional character and story created 160 years ago by the American poet, language professor and scholar Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Evangeline. Evangeline is symbolically and metaphorically very powerful, which partially explains the interest she has been raising for so long. Evangeline has first been understood as the quintessence of the newborn nation, an ideal of outsiders brought together in the New World as the consequences of persecutions, in order to create a new community and nation. This article aims to show how the fictional character has been appropriated again and again in that vein – whether flattered or disparaged - by different nationalist discourses in search of a figure that could incarnate their creation myth or own newly born imagined communities and identities, adapting the icon to their own context and goals.


The front pages of our newspapers and the chatter on the blogs bear witness to the divorce of law from justice. Highly paid lawyers mine the law for loopholes to help Fortune 500 corporations legally evade their taxes and spoil the environment. In a world governed by the rule of law, justice, it seems, is a chimera, an abstraction, and thus a distraction from the real world struggle over political interest. Ought we, then, to abandon talk about abstract ideals of justice in favor of strategic and political arguments? In The Gift of Science, a bold, revisionist account of 300 years of jurisprudence, Roger Berkowitz argues that the idea of justice is endangered and needs to be saved. Moving from the scientific revolution to the rise of law and economics, Berkowitz tells the story of how lawyers invented a science of law to preserve law's claim to moral authority. The giftof science to law, however, proved bittersweet. Instead of strengthening the bond between law and justice, the subordination of law to science transformed law from an ethical order into a tool for social and economic ends. The Gift of Science is a mesmerizing and original intellectual history of law. As a genealogy of the modern divorce of law from justice, Berkowitz shows that positive law has its formative impulse not in the English works of Thomas Hobbes and John Austin, but in the German tradition of legal science stretching from Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz to Friedrich Carl von Savigny and Rudolf von Jhering. As a contribution to jurisprudence, Berkowitz argues that positive law is best understood as a product of science and not, as usually thought, as the will of a sovereign. As a work of political theory, Berkowitz explores how the subordination of law to social science has hollowed out the ethical center of law as the institutional embodiment of justice. Finally, the book makes manifest the danger that the transformation of law itself into a product of science poses for the possibility of law, justice, and freedom in the modern age.


Acne vulgaris is a disorder of the pilosebaceous unit that affects approximately 85% of teenagers. There are multiple factors involved in the pathogenesis, among which an imbalance in the skin microbiota, with an increased representation of Cutibacterium (former Propionibacterium) acnes, that activates innate immunity and leads to chronic inflammation. This review highlights recent observations regarding the influence of different Cutibacterium acnes phylotypes in acne and the importance of antimicrobial resistance of acne-associated strains.


In the present work, we report on the synthesis of peptide functionalized magneto-plasmonic nanoparticles in a simple microfluidic platform. Superparamagnetic nanoparticles and gold nanorods were selected for this study. Magnetic nanoparticles were functionalized with peptide D1, which can bind selectively to toxic aggregates of the β-amyloid peptide associated with Alzheimer's disease. Gold nanorods were functionalized with chitosan replacing the surfactant cetyltrimethylammonium bromide to reduce the cytotoxic effect. The selected microfluidic strategy yields structures with plasmonic and magnetic properties in a nanostructure. Cytotoxic assays with SH-SY5Y cells demonstrate that nanoparticles obtained by microfluidics do not affect cell viability at the studied concentrations. Additionally, these magneto-plasmonic nanoparticles inhibit fibril formation demonstrating that the magneto-plasmonic nanoparticles obtained by microfluidics could be applied for a potential treatment and diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease.


We present results of a study to quantify the effects of dust on the derived photometric parameters of disk and bulges obtained from bulge-disk decomposition: scale-length, effective radius, Sersic index, disk axis-ratio, and bulge-to-disk ratio. The dust induced changes in these parameters were obtained by fitting simulated images of composite systems (containing a disk and a bulge) produced using radiative transfer calculations. The simulations were fitted with the GALFIT 3.0.2 data analysis algorithm. Fits were done with both a combination of an exponential plus a variable-index Sersic function as well as with a combination of two variable-index Sersic functions. We find that dust is biasing the derived exponential scale-length of decomposed disks towards smaller values than would be otherwise derived if the galaxy were to have no bulge. Similarly, the derived bulge-to-disk ratio is biased towards smaller values. However, the derived axis-ratio of the disk is not changed in the decomposition process. The derived effective radius of decomposed disks of systems having exponential bulges is found to be less affected by dust when fits are done with two variable-index Sersic functions. For the same type of fits dust is found to bias the value of the derived effective radius of decomposed disks towards lower values for systems having de Vaucouleurs bulges.


Silicon carbide devices have become increasingly popular in electric vehicles, predominantly due to their fast-switching speeds, which allow for the construction of smaller power converters. Temperature sensitive electrical parameters (TSEPs) can be used to determine the junction temperature, just like silicon-based power switches. This paper presents a new technique to estimate the junction temperature of a single-chip silicon carbide (SiC) metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET). During off-state operation, high-frequency chirp signals below the resonance frequency of the gate-source impedance are injected into the gate of a discrete SiC device. The gate-source voltage frequency response is captured and then processed using the fast Fourier transform. The data is then accumulated and displayed over the chirp frequency spectrum. Results show a linear relationship between the processed gate-source voltage and the junction temperature. The effectiveness of the proposed TSEPs is demonstrated in a laboratory scenario, where chirp signals are injected in a stand-alone biased discrete SiC module, and in an in-field scenario, where the TSEP concept is applied to a MOSFET operating in a DC/DC converter.


Targeted gene flow is an emerging conservation strategy. It involves translocating individuals with favorable genes to areas where they will have a conservation benefit. The applications for targeted gene flow are wide‐ranging but include preadapting native species to the arrival of invasive species. The endangered carnivorous marsupial, the northern quoll (Dasyurus hallucatus), has declined rapidly since the introduction of the cane toad (Rhinella marina), which fatally poisons quolls that attack them. There are, however, a few remaining toad‐invaded quoll populations in which the quolls survive because they know not to eat cane toads. It is this toad‐smart behavior we hope to promote through targeted gene flow. For targeted gene flow to be feasible, however, toad‐smart behavior must have a genetic basis. To assess this, we used a common garden experiment, comparing offspring from toad‐exposed and toad‐naïve parents raised in identical environments, to determine whether toad‐smart behavior is heritable. Offspring from toad‐exposed populations were substantially less likely to eat toads than those with toad‐naïve parents. Hybrid offspring showed similar responses to quolls with 2 toad‐exposed parents, indicating the trait may be dominant. Together, these results suggest a heritable trait and rapid adaptive response in a small number of toad‐exposed populations. Although questions remain about outbreeding depression, our results are encouraging for targeted gene flow. It should be possible to introduce toad‐smart behavior into soon to be affected quoll populations.


Due to climate change, the need to protect biodiversity and reduce pollution, and governmental regulations, many organizations are aiming to become more environmentally sustainable. In this context, researchers and practitioners are increasingly interested in the construct of employee green behavior (EGB). EGB has been considered by numerous empirical studies over the last two decades and its associations with demographic characteristics, individual differences, work-related perceptions, and job attitudes. To systematically synthesize the rapidly growing literature on EGB, we conducted a meta-analysis ( k = 135 independent samples; total N = 47,442 employees). Results showed positive associations between EGB and, for example, pro-environmental attitudes, corporate social responsibility, and green psychological climate. We further report the results of a meta-analytic path model based on the theory of planned behavior, which showed that pro-environmental attitude, norms, perceived behavioral control, and intentions positively predicted EGB.


Electron-energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) performed using a modern transmission scanning electron microscope (STEM) now offers sub-nanometre spatial resolution and an energy resolution down to 200 meV or less, in favourable cases. The absorption spectra, which probe empty states, cover the soft x-ray region and may be obtained under conditions of well-defined momentum transfer (angle-resolved), providing a double projection onto crystallographic site and symmetry within the density of states. By combining the very high brightness of field-emission electron sources (brighter than a synchrotron) with the high cross-section of electron scattering, together with parallel detection (not possible with scanning x-ray absorption spectroscopy), a form of spectroscopy ideally suited to the study of nanostructures, interfacial states and defects in materials is obtained with uniquely high spatial resolution. We review the basic theory, the relationship of EELS to optical properties and the dielectric response function, the removal of multiple scattering artefacts and channelling effects. We consider applications in the light of recent developments in aberration corrector and electron monochromator design. Examples are cited of inner-shell spectra obtained from individual atoms within thin crystals, of the detection of interfacial electronic states in semiconductors, of inner-shell near edge structure mapped with sub-nanometre spatial resolution in glasses and of spectra obtained from individual carbon nanotubes, amongst many others.


Introduction: Recently, there has been a tendency to increase the incidence of pertussis in many countries of the world and this disease in these countries is among 10 most serious causes of death in young children. The aim of the work − is to analyze specialized scientific literature for generalization of data and present a modern look at questions of etiology, epidemiology, pathogenesis, clinical manifestations, diagnosis, treatment and immunoprophylaxis of pertussis. Materials and methods: Available scientific sources over the past years, devoted to the problem of pertussis are studied by the methods of overview, system and content analysis. Review and conclusions: The main questions of pertussis are outlined. Timely diagnosis, treatment and immunoprophylaxis allow adjusting the actions of doctors to solve the issues of the decrease of the incidence of pertussis. This is greatly helped by modern guidelines for the management of patients with this pathology.


To provide ubiquitous access to the proliferating rich media on the Internet, scalable streaming servers must be able to provide differentiated services to various client requests. Recent advances of transcoding technology make network-I/O bandwidth usages at the server communication ports controllable by request schedulers on the fly. In this article, we propose a transcoding-enabled bandwidth allocation scheme for service differentiation on streaming servers. It aims to deliver high bit rate streams to high priority request classes without overcompromising low priority request classes. We investigate the problem of providing differentiated streaming services at application level in two aspects: stream bandwidth allocation and request scheduling. We formulate the bandwidth allocation problem as an optimization of a harmonic utility function of the stream quality factors and derive the optimal streaming bit rates for requests of different classes under various server load conditions. We prove that the optimal allocation, referred to as harmonic proportional allocation, not only maximizes the system utility function, but also guarantees proportional fair sharing between classes with different prespecified differentiation weights. We evaluate the allocation scheme, in combination with two popular request scheduling approaches, via extensive simulations and compare it with an absolute differentiation strategy and a proportional-share strategy tailored from relative differentiation in networking. Simulation results show that the harmonic proportional allocation scheme can meet the objective of relative differentiation in both short and long timescales and greatly enhance the service availability and maintain low queueing delay when the streaming system is highly loaded.


This book is a guide to the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) for scientists, engineers, and mathematicians teaching at the collegiate level in countries around the world. It shows instructors how to draw on their disciplinary knowledge and teaching experience to investigate questions about student learning. It takes them all the way through the inquiry process beginning with framing a research question and selecting a research design, moving on to gathering and analyzing evidence, and finally to making the results public. Numerous examples are provided at each stage, many from published studies of teaching and learning in science, engineering, or mathematics. At strategic points, short sets of questions prompt readers to pause and reflect, plan, or act. These questions are derived from the authors' experience leading many SoTL workshops in the United States and Canada. The taxonomy of SoTL questions—What works? What is? What could be?—that emerged from the SoTL studies undertaken by the Carnegie scholars provides a useful framework at many stages of the inquiry process. The book addresses the issue of evaluating and valuing this work, including implications for junior faculty who wish to engage in SoTL. The authors explain why SoTL should be of interest to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) faculty at all types of institutions, including faculty members active in traditional STEM research. They also give their perspective on the benefits of SoTL to faculty, to their institutions, to the academy, and to students.


Hydrosalpinx is a common condition among women of reproductive age. It is related to low pregnancy rates in the settings of in vitro fertilization–embryo transfer programs. Such low rates are not yet well understood, and may be due to poor endometrial receptivity and abnormal expression of key molecules in the endometrium that are important for implantation. The available data on the inflammatory response, endometrial blood flow, integrins, leukemia inhibitory factor, matrix metalloproteinases, and homeobox gene A10 expression in the presence of hydrosalpinx are reviewed. In addition, the evidence for treatment options to improve pregnancy rates is also discussed.


Along with the introduction of the concept of industrialization 4.0, we are taking another step towards the times of big data. The informationized, datamation and intelligent development of industry pushes the development of monitoring on rail traffic health, which makes accurate and effective monitoring on trains status and prevention of severe accidents become an inexorable trend. The research object of the paper is rolling bearing which is one of the key components of pulling motor. The research process it that collect the vibration signals of bearing through acceleration sensor, pretreat the raw data, then extract the feature indexes, carry out factor analysis on feature indexes and research into the correlation among feature indexes, surmount the subjectivity for index selection, then realize dimensionality reduction of big data, establish the bearing status deterioration assessment model with logic regression and get the health degree through calculation of real-time feature indexes, then monitor the operation state of bearing according the health degree , and find problem timely, thus reduce the accident incidence and maintenance cost and raise economic benefit.


Adaptive optics systems offer the prospect of significantly increasing the capabilities of high-power laser focusability, which is currently limited by thermal distortions. Using novel wave-front measurement techniques that improve the stability of such systems and a downstream large-aperture deformable mirror that does not bear the usual limitations associated with precompensation, we have improved the focusability of a high-power (6×100-J, 1-ns) Nd:glass laser facility by a factor of 6. Measuring the wave front and the on-target focal spot at full power, we obtained after correction focal spots with a best Strehl ratio of 0.6. The pulse peak intensity could thus be increased to ∼2×1016 W/cm2, a level beyond reach of the usual focal spot shaping techniques. We then used the near-diffraction-limited focal spots produced by this system to measure the laser–plasma coupling for a single, controlled filament of light and to underline the importance of the coupling among the numerous speckles within conventional multispeckled beams.


Antibacterial activity of high molecular weight water-soluble (HMWWS) chitosan (800 kDa) was investigated against four Gram-negative (Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhimurium, Vibrio cholerae and Vibrio parahaemolyticus) and two Gram-positive (Staphylococcus aureus and Listeria monocytogenes) bacteria. Catfish fillets were surface-inoculated with these food-borne pathogens and coated with chitosan dissolved in aspartic acid (AS) or acetic acid (AC) solution at different concentrations (1% or 3%). Samples were stored at 4 °C for 8 days, except for those inoculated with Vibrio species (10 °C for 6 days). Overall, the most effective coating treatment was the 3% HMWWS chitosan in AS solution (800AS3%). Compared with the control, significant (P < 0.05) reductions caused by 800AS3% were observed for all tested pathogens at the end of storage. The growth of V. parahaemolyticus was completely suppressed by 800AS3%. This study demonstrated that HMWWS chitosan in AS solution could be used as an alternative antimicrobial coating for catfish fillets.


ABSTRACT Previous research applying quantifiable measurements has established significant positive associations between social capital and mental health in older adults. This study aimed to obtain a deeper understanding of the causal mechanisms of social capital affecting mental wellbeing among older people. The study is based on two independent qualitative data materials collected through two focus group interviews and an open-ended question included in a Finnish population-based postal survey. The findings indicate that informal social contacts such as family members and life-long relationships between friends impact the experienced mental wellbeing among older adults due to shared life events, social support, mutual appreciation and trust, as well as a sense of belonging through common social activities. Hence, this study challenges Putnam's idea of social capital as a collective concept focusing on formal contacts and the benefits on a collective level. In addition, the findings highlight the obstacles specific to older adults in maintaining social networks and participation, which should be considered in order to promote mental health in later life.


Bollywood movies have been long known for their colorful song-and-dance numbers and knack for combining drama, comedy, action-adventure, and music. But when India entered the global marketplace in the early 1990s, its film industry transformed radically. Production and distribution of films became regulated, advertising and marketing created a largely middle-class audience, and films began to fit into genres like science fiction and horror. In this bold study of what she names "New Bollywood", Sangita Gopal contends that the key to understanding these changes is to analyze films' evolving treatment of romantic relationships. Gopal argues that the form of the conjugal duo in movies reflects other social forces in India's new consumerist and global society. She takes a daring look at recent Hindi films and movie trends - the decline of song-and-dance sequences, the upgraded status of the horror genre, and the rise of the multiplex and multi-plot - to demonstrate how these relationships exemplify different formulas of contemporary living. A provocative account of how cultural artifacts can embody globalization's effects on intimate life, "Conjugations" will shake up the study of Hindi film.


This paper presents time-series evidence on the importance of liquidity constraints in aggregate consumption expenditures. In contrast to previous studies, the author finds the proportion of consumption attributable to liquidity constrained behavior to be large and highly statistically significant. The estimation pays careful attention to the problems of stochastic consumption and temporal aggregation, and the estimates are shown to be robust to alternative specifications involving costly adjustment of consumption, public spending, and to stochastically varying rates of return. Copyright 1992 by Oxford University Press.


The objective of this study was to document the secular trend in breastfeeding in Brazil. Data bases from seven national surveys conducted from 1975 to 2008 were reanalyzed. To obtain compatible data from the different surveys, children in the same age group and the same indicators were analyzed, using the same statistical techniques. The median duration of breastfeeding increased from 2.5 to 11.3 months, and the prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding in infants under six months of age increased from 3.1% to 41.0% in the period. The results indicate important challenges in accelerating the rhythm at which this practice in Brazil moves towards meeting international recommendations.


This paper presents a database containing 'ground truth' segmentations produced by humans for images of a wide variety of natural scenes. We define an error measure which quantifies the consistency between segmentations of differing granularities and find that different human segmentations of the same image are highly consistent. Use of this dataset is demonstrated in two applications: (1) evaluating the performance of segmentation algorithms and (2) measuring probability distributions associated with Gestalt grouping factors as well as statistics of image region properties.


An efficient execution model for tree structured computations is presented. A general framework for analyzing the performance of this type of computation for any given topology is discussed. The framework is used to derive models for two widely used parallel programming strategies: processor farms and divide and conquer. The models were validated on a large multicomputer, and it was shown that their accuracy is such that they can be used to predict the performance of applications that use the above strategies. The use of these models to evaluate performance and to restructure the application to improve performance is discussed.<<ETX>>


The right to respect for physical and mental integrity generally operates to restrict the power of the state in relation to invasive medical research and treatment. The inclusion of this right in Article 17 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities raised concerns about the justifiability of involuntary treatment schemes relating to those with serious mental illnesses. This article traces the discussions concerning various drafts of Article 17 and analyses the right to integrity in regional human rights charters. It is argued that Article 17 should best be understood as limiting certain non-consensual medical interventions, but not all of them.


The people of Scotland are set to make history in 2014. As the country's future governance continues to provoke debate and inspire opinion, Scotland's Future takes an impartial view of constitutional change and what it means for Scotland. Objective and professionally rigorous, it looks at the questions that must be asked and the realities that must be faced. The analysis supports no political agenda; it injects insight and reflection into every area including all the key macroeconomic and microeconomic themes and the future governance of Scotland.


Molecular techniques have revealed that avian mating systems are more diverse and complex than previously thought. We used microsatellite markers to determine genetic parentage, the prevalence of extrapair paternity and quasi-parasitism (i.e. situations where a male's extrapair mate lay in his nest) in a socially monogamous population of three-toed woodpeckers (Picoides tridactylus) in southern Finland. A total of 129 adults and nestlings, representing 5–9 families annually from 2004–2007, were genotyped at up to ten microsatellite loci. The results of genetic assignment tests confirmed that monogamous parentage characterized the majority (84.6%, 22/26) of broods, and that most (93.8%, 75/80) nestlings were the offspring of their social parents. Two of 80 nestlings (2.5%) in two of 26 broods (7.7%) were sired by extrapair males and quasi-parasitism occurred in 3.8% (3/80) of nestlings and 7.7% (2/26) of broods. Hence, the levels of extrapair parentage were low, possibly because both genetic polygyny and polyandry are constrained by the high paternal effort required for parental care. The co-occurrence of low levels of extrapair paternity and quasi-parasitism are discussed in light of ecological and behavioural factors characterizing the species biology.


The restoration of euglycemia after intraportal islet transplantation remains short-lived, requires islets from multiple donors, and necessitates life-long immunosuppressive therapy. In this thesis we propose different bioengineering strategies to improve islet transplantation outcome.
In chapter 2 and 3 we describe the development and characterization of a microwell scaffold platform for extrahepatic islet transplantation. In chapter 2 the concept of the microwell design is introduced. We have shown that human islets cultured in this platform for seven days exhibit an insulin secretion profile and insulin content comparable to those of free-floating control islets. Chapter 3 explores three different fabrication methods to introduce pores in the microwell scaffold platform: particulate leaching, solvent casting on pillared wafers, and laser drilling. Methods were evaluated for pore size and geometry, reproducibility and flexibility, and the form and stability of the final construct. Transplantation studies in the epididymal fat elucidate the potential of this porous scaffold platform to restore blood glucose levels in a diabetic mouse model. However, we do observe a significant decrease in beta-cell density and a changed vascularization pattern in scaffold-implanted islets compared to native pancreatic islets, which, we hypothesize, are indications for delayed revascularization. Therefore, we explore in chapter 4 the potential of composite islets with different proangiogenic cell types to improve islet revascularization after transplantation. Here, we demonstrate that composite islets with hMSCs and HUVECs exhibit a higher in vivo angiogenic potential compared with uncoated islets or islets combined with hMSCs or pre-conditioned hMSCs in EGM-2 medium. In chapter 5, we propose a method to monitor non-invasively beta-cell survival after islet transplantation. For this, we describe the use of radiolabelled exendin-3, which specifically targets pancreatic β-cells. We demonstrate that the uptake of 111In-exendin-3 in scaffold-implanted islets could be clearly visualized on ex vivo SPECT scans, with histology and autoradiography studies showing vascularized islets with specific tracer uptake in β-cell regions. Provided that tracer uptake can also be determined in vivo, this presents a viable method to monitor the influence of native and engineered transplantation sites on long-term β-cell survival.


Globalization and the change to post-industrial societies have led to an increased value of knowledge-intensive processes. Areas creating and utilizing new knowledge, such as research and development are of high importance for today's companies. In these areas, knowledge workers drive the creation of value in knowledge-intensive processes. However, there is still no established process-based support due to the dynamic nature of these processes. The latter requires a high level of communication and cooperation between all involved workers. The proCollab research project, hosted at Ulm University, aims to holistically support knowledge workers and knowledge-intensive processes. The concept of proCollab relies on the lifecycle-based task management in the context of processes. In particular, knowledge workers may use digital task lists to synchronize and coordinate their work more effectively. To demonstrate the capabilities of proCollab, a sophisticated proof-of-concept prototype has been developed. This work presents the design and implementation of the dynamic, web-based user interface of the current version of the proCollab prototype.