Term structure models are routinely used by central banks to assess the impact of their communication on market participants' views of future interest rate developments. However, recent studies have pointed out that traditional term structure models can provide misleading indications when policy rates are at the zero lower bound (ZLB). One of the main drawbacks is that they are unable to reproduce the stylized fact that policy rates tend to remain at the ZLB for prolonged periods of time once they reach it. A consensus has recently emerged that shadow rate models, first introduced by Black (1995), are apt to solve this problem. The main idea is that the shadow rate (i.e., the short-term interest rate that would prevail in the absence of the ZLB) can move in negative territory for long time spans even when the actual rate remains close to the ZLB. Due to their high nonlinearity, shadow rate models are particularly difficult to estimate and have been so far only estimated with approximate methods. We propose an exact Bayesian method for their estimation. We use it to study developments in euro and US dollar yield curves since the end of the '90s. Our estimates confirm - and provide a quantitative assessment of - the fact that there has been a significant divergence of monetary policies in the euro area and in the US over the past years: between 2009 and 2013, the shadow rate was much lower in the US than in the euro area, while the opposite has been true since 2014; furthermore, at the end of our sample (January 2015), the most likely date of the the first increase in policy rates was estimated to be around mid-2015 in the US and around 2020 in the euro area.


Internalized homophobia, or the internalization of negative attitudes toward one's sexual minority identity, is associated with sexual risk behaviors among young sexual minority men (YSMM). However, the formation and maintenance of secure or insecure socio-emotional bonds with friends, family members, and intimate partners (i.e., adult attachment) may mitigate or exacerbate the negative effects of exposure to internalized homophobia. Nevertheless, little is known about how adult attachment influences the association between internalized homophobia and sexual risk behaviors (e.g., condomless anal sex) among YSMM. Thus, this study examined the potential moderating effect of adult attachment on the association between internalized homophobia and condomless anal sex (CAS) behaviors (i.e., insertive CAS and receptive CAS) among a sample of N = 268 YSMM who participated in the study between June 2015-March 2017 using zero-inflated Poisson regression models. We found that adult attachment anxiety, but not adult attachment avoidance, significantly moderated the association between internalized homophobia and receptive CAS behaviors such that those higher on adult attachment anxiety and internalized homophobia had fewer receptive CAS events over the preceding 30 days as compared to those lower on adult attachment anxiety and internalized homophobia. Research efforts should focus on unpacking the complex associations between adult attachment, internalized homophobia, and sexual risk behaviors among YSMM.


In this study we report changes in HDL concentration and composition in acute and convalescent Kawasaki disease. Notable reductions in plasma HDL-cholesterol (0.54 ± 0.2 mmol/L, normal level 0.7-1.81 mmol/L) and apolipoprotein A-I (apoA-I) (56 ± 28 mg/dL, normal level 141 ± 22 mg/dL) were observed in all 24 patients studied during the acute phase of Kawasaki disease. These changes were accompanied by the marked appearance of serum amyloid A (SAA) protein in the plasma, associated with HDL3-like lipoprotein particles. The distribution of apoA-I was analyzed in five patients and showed a significant increase in lipid-free apoA-I in the bottom fraction (28.8 ± 4.1%, normal range 10-15%), suggesting displacement of apoA-I from the HDL particles by SAA. Within 2 wk after acute Kawasaki disease, levels of HDL-cholesterol and apoA-I returned to the normal range, and SAA disappeared from the plasma. The HDL of patients with Kawasaki disease was markedly enriched in triglyceride even in the absence of changes in total plasma triglyceride. The core composition of HDL returned to the normal range more slowly than the plasma HDL-cholesterol and apoA-I levels. This suggests that Kawasaki disease has a profound effect on the lipoprotein profile acutely and a more subtle sustained effect on the HDL composition. We interpret these changes as manifestations of the acute phase response in Kawasaki disease.


Thyroid disease and Diabetes (type 1 and type 2) are known to be pathophysiologically associated. The implications of the associations have clinically relevant implications for insulin sensitivity and adequate management requirements. Interconnectedness of common signalling pathways forms the pathophysiological basis of this association. In the case of type 1 diabetes and autoimmune thyroid disease, linked genetic susceptibilities may be involved. Interactions between thyroid hormone and the basal mechanisms controlling appetite, energy expenditure and insulin sensitivity regulation / secretion governance are also significant to understand. A clearer understanding of the interactions between diabetes mellitus and thyroid hormones has the potential to assist in optimization of treatment in a select group of diabetic patients.


BACKGROUND
 Emergency departments (EDs) are often perceived as scary and have been shown to induce anxiety in children. Some hospitals utilize Certified Child Life Specialists (CCLS), hospital staff trained to meet the psychosocial needs of children, to assist when children show signs of anxiety and/or pain during treatment. The CCLS will distract the child, such as with an iPad; however, the child may still watch the IV start, which could result in a failure of the distraction. Digital distraction, distracting a child with technology during stressful procedures, has shown to reduce pain and anxiety better than medications or no distraction at all. Virtual reality (VR) is one form of digital distraction and is increasingly being used in hospitals, as both vision and hearing are blocked by the headset. Previous research shows that the more senses used in the distraction, the less likely the patient will experience pain and anxiety.

 OBJECTIVE
 The main goal of this study was to improve care delivery for children in the ED while receiving IV placements. To achieve this, we utilized VR to determine whether it could decrease pain and anxiety for children by acting as a form of digital distraction.

 METHODS
 The intervention included patients between the ages of 5 and 12 who needed an IV in the ED at a public, Michigan hospital. Each participant was randomly assigned to either VR or the standard of care distraction (SD). For those in the VR group, the child played a game while wearing a VR headset. For those in the SD group, the CCLS used standard distraction methods, such as watching a video on an iPad. The guardian then completed a survey to measure the effectiveness and satisfaction of the distraction.

 RESULTS
 Thirty children participated in the study. Of those who participated, 12 guardians from the VR group and 16 from the SD completed surveys. Seventy-five percent of the VR group and 94 percent of the SD agreed that the distraction reduced the child's anxiety, while 75 percent of the VR group and 88 percent of the SD agreed that the distraction reduced the child's pain during the IV placement. Sixty-seven percent of the VR group versus 94 percent of the SD were more satisfied with health care delivery because of the distraction, and 83 percent of the VR group while 88 percent of the SD were more likely to choose this hospital again because of the distraction.

 CONCLUSIONS
 Although there is potential for the use of VR in health care settings, the use of technology in addition to the CCLS shows great potential to reduce pain and anxiety while improving health care delivery and patient satisfaction. Because most guardians reported positive outcomes with both VR and the SD, the use of technology compared to no distraction should be examined in larger studies to fully understand the effect of digital distraction along with human interaction. With the option of technology in conjunction with caregiver guidance, pediatric patients may perceive less pain and have a better care experience during IV placements in the Emergency Department.


CONTEXT
Lumbar instability can cause lumbar spondylolisthesis and chronic low-back pain in sports situation. Abdominal hollowing is commonly used in clinical practice to preferentially target the transversus abdominis (TrA) to stabilize the lumbar vertebrae; however, the contribution of muscle elasticity and lateral slide of the TrA to lumbar stability has not yet been clarified.

OBJECTIVE
To clarify the contribution of elasticity and lateral slide of the TrA to lumbar stability and to identify an effective exercise to stabilize the lumbar vertebrae.

DESIGN
Experimental study.

SETTING
Laboratory.

PATIENTS
A total of 29 healthy males participated in this study.

INTERVENTIONS
The participants performed hollowing during measurement of muscle elasticity of TrA and both knees extension from crook lying position for pelvic stability measurement.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Lumbar stability, muscle elasticity change ratio, and lateral slide amount of TrA.

RESULTS
There was a significant correlation between elasticity of the TrA and lumbar stability; however, no relationship was observed between lateral slide and lumbar stability or elasticity of the TrA.

CONCLUSION
Elasticity of the TrA and lumbar stability was significantly correlated; therefore, improving the tonicity of the TrA may stabilize the lumbar vertebrae in healthy individuals. Moreover, hollowing with maximum effort may be effective as training aimed to stabilize the lumbar vertebrae for physical dysfunction due to lumbar instability.


Bioeconomic theory predicts that the trade-offs between maximization of economic benefits and conservation of vulnerable marine species can be assessed using the ratio between the discount rate of fishers and the intrinsic rate of growth of the exploited populations. In this paper, we use this theory to identify areas of the global ocean where higher vulnerability of fishes to overfishing would be expected in the absence of management. We derive an index to evaluate the level of vulnerability by comparing discount rates and fishes' intrinsic population growth rates. Using published discount rates of countries that are reported to fish in the ocean and estimating the intrinsic population growth rate for major exploited fishes in the world, we calculate the vulnerability index for each 0.5° latitude × 0.5° longitude grid for each taxon and each fishing country. Our study shows that vulnerability is inherently high on the northeastern coast of Canada, the Pacific coast of Mexico, the Peruvian coast, in the South Pacific, on the southern and southeastern coast of Africa, and in the Antarctic region. It should be noted that this index does not account for the management regime currently in place in different areas, and thus mainly reflects the vulnerability resulting from the intrinsic life history characteristics of the fish species being targeted and the discount rates of the fishers exploiting them. Despite the uncertainties of this global-scale analysis, our study highlights the potential applications of large-scale spatial bioeconomics in identifying areas where fish stocks are more likely to be over-exploited when there is no effective fisheries management; this applies to many fisheries around the world today.


— Semiconductor materials with coatings have a wide range of applications in MEMS and NEMS. This work uses transfer-matrix method for calculating the radiative properties. Dopped silicon is used and the coherent formulation is applied. The Drude model for the optical constants of doped silicon is employed. Results showed that for the visible wavelengths, more emittance occurs in greater concentrations and the reflectance decreases as the concentration increases. In these wavelengths, transmittance is negligible. Donars and acceptors act similar in visible wavelengths. The effect of wave interference can be understood by plotting the spectral properties such as reflectance or transmittance of a thin dielectric film versus the film thickness and analyzing the oscillations of properties due to constructive and destructive interferences. But this effect has not been shown at visible wavelengths. At room temperature, the scattering process is dominated by lattice scattering for lightly doped silicon, and the impurity scattering becomes important for heavily doped silicon when the dopant concentration exceeds


We like to bring an element of fun and games into our information literacy teaching when we can, whether that is using crosswords, treasure hunts, or light hearted videos, but we hadn't before brought games, along with the technology and social nature of web 2.0, into the core of the library. We're currently changing this and have created a social, online game based around using the library resources working with a creative outfit (Running in the Halls - www.rith.co.uk). Called Lemon Tree, it brings ideas of gamification right into the centre of library activities. There are many applications, often available as applications for smartphones, which turn everyday tasks into chances to win points, badges and other virtual rewards, and share them with your social networks. Location based networks typify this idea and have exploded in popularity recently, with networks such as Foursquare (http://foursquare.com) and Gowalla (http://gowalla.com) allowing you to 'check in'� to various locations, to share that activity with friends, become Mayor� of a location or win badges for different types of activity. A more extreme version of this gamification of everyday activity is Epic Win (http://www.rexbox.co.uk/epicwin/), which allows you to create a to do� list and play that list as though it is a game, gaining rewards for completing each task. Lemon Tree takes these ideas of virtual rewards and inbuilt social networks and turns common interactions with the library into a game. Users are able to link Lemon Tree to their library record, winning points and badges by activities such as taking books out, leaving comments on books, and borrowing a range of items. They build their own social network within Lemon Tree, but the system also links to existing networks such as Twitter and Facebook. Lemon Tree feeds back into our systems as well, so comments left on a book left by a student will appear on our library catalogue for everyone to see, regardless as to whether they choose to play and interact with Lemon Tree. The rewards users can gain through Lemon tree are developing as we see what works and what our users enjoy, with a massive range of options possible. We are particularly interested though in engaging those people who we know come into our library, but borrow very few books and rarely access our electronic resources. If we can make it fun for them to use the information resources we have and increase their usage then Lemon Tree will have succeeded for us. This is the first time the details of Lemon Tree will have been presented at a conference.


This paper attempts to consider in a systematic way the developments of the public debt in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Romania during the 1990.s. After a brief outline of the public indebtedness of the four countries before 1989, it examines the public debt dynamics after 1990 and tries to capture its main determinants: to what extend the changes in the public debt ratio to GDP were caused by fiscal policy as opposed to other factors, like the difference between the growth rate of the economy and the effective interest rate on debt. The structure of the public debt is shown and main changes are summarised. The paper also tries to assess the implications of the countries. indebtedness to their further fiscal sustainability.


Current blockchain platforms, especially the recent permissioned systems, have architectural limitations: smart contracts run sequentially, all node executes all smart contracts, consensus protocols are hard-coded, the trust model is static and not flexible, and non-determinism in smart-contract execution poses serious problems. Overcoming these limitations is critical for improving both functional properties of blockchains, such as confidentiality and consistency, as well as their non-functional properties, such as performance and scalability. We discuss these limitations in the context of permissioned blockchains, including an early version of the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain platform, and how a re-design of Hyperledger Fabric's architecture addresses them.


First perspective on the paper by Ortega Garcia et al (see page 642)

For 30 years cancers have been the most feared diseases linked to environmental chemicals. Recently developmental effects, especially those of the central nervous system, appear to have taken their place at least in part. Both the chemicals involved and the ways of exposure are manifold. Methyl mercury, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and dioxins derive from fish. Lead comes from multiple sources, historically from leaded gasoline and paints, in some countries also from plumbing. Polybrominated diphenylethers are added to synthetic materials as flame retardants. We are exposed to pesticide residues in our food as well as in our home environment.

Most of these potential new dangers are plagued with controversy. In many cases it is a question of dose. There is no doubt about the developmental neurotoxicity of lead or methyl mercury, but are the present environmental exposures high enough to cause risk? In some cases there are disputes on plausible mechanisms. Such is the case with effects based on endocrine disruption. Is sufficient disturbance of oestrogen or the thyroid hormone system likely, if we are exposed to environmental chemicals which are orders of magnitude weaker than natural hormones, or to chemicals having weak effects on hormone synthesis or metabolism? One of the tricky questions is: When? An otherwise innocuous exposure might be important at a certain developmental stage, within a time window perhaps only lasting a few days during embryonic or fetal development. All of these …


High current hollow cathodes used for electric propulsion have been found to have energetic ions in the plume caused by a mechanism still not fully understood. These anomalously energetic ions have been shown to erode cathode keepers and pose a risk to cathodes used for long-duration missions. This work builds on previous work investigating the effects of ion acoustic turbulence (IAT) in the plume and its effects on the ion population. Laserinduced fluorescence (LIF) and plasma probes were used to measure several steady-state and fluctuating plasma properties related to ion acoustic waves. A preliminary analysis of these data show the ion distribution function along the the centerline to be heated primarily in the axial direction resulting in ion temperature anisotropy. A bimodal ion velocity distribution function was observed with the axial LIF beam near the anode, consisting of slow and fast populations. It was not possible to detect two distinct populations using the radial LIF measurements. The fast population was found to accelerate with distance from the keeper orifice whereas the slow ion population remained nearly stationary, and is believed to be caused by ion generation in the plume through ionization or charge-exchange collisions. Wave energy and the ion acoustic wave direction were measured and show an increase in wave energy downstream, highly concentrated along the centerline. The ion acoustic waves were found to propagate outward from the orifice and are approximately collinear with the drift direction of the fast ion population.


Scaling machines are identified as one of the major contributors to unplanned downtime. In general, to gain a better understanding of downtime, an analysis of the downtime should be performed. Downtime analysis usually involves a group consisting of many people with various backgrounds. The use of a visualisation method can act as a bridge that eliminates the knowledge gap within the group. The present study has two purposes: firstly to develop a method for visualisation of downtime and secondly to analyse the downtime of a scaling machine utilising the proposed visualisation method. The proposed method provides a visualisation of the downtime estimation and the precision and the uncertainty of the estimation at a given confidence level, as well as the factors influencing the failure. An analysis of the failures of the critical components of the scaling machine has also been conducted and suggestions for improvement have been proposed.


Background Exposure of the posterolateral talar dome for osteochondral autograft transfer can be challenging. The purpose of this study is to compare surgical exposures for perpendicular access to the posterolateral talar dome using osteochondral transfer instrumentation. Materials and Methods Five surgical approaches were performed on each of eight cadaveric ankles. The sequence was: (1) Anterolateral arthrotomy with ATFL release, (2) Anterolateral tibial osteotomy, (3) Fibular osteotomy with ATFL intact, (4) Fibular osteotomy with ATFL release, and (5) Fibular osteotomy with ATFL/CFL release. (ATFL repaired between 1 and 2). While maintaining the orientation of the harvester perpendicular to the talar dome articular surface, osteochondral plugs were harvested as far posteriorly as possible using a 6-mm harvester. Distances from the anterior talar articular surface to the posterior aspect of the recipient site were measured. Statistical analysis used ANOVA and Fisher post hoc tests. Results Average AP exposure (mm) and percentage of AP talar dome dimensions exposed: (1) Anterolateral arthrotomy with ATFL release: 21.2 mm (43.3%), (2) Anterolateral tibial osteotomy: 33.7 mm (68.5%), (3) Fibular osteotomy(ATFL intact): 43.2 mm (87.8%), (4) Fibular osteotomy with ATFL release: 44.9 mm (91.2%), and (5) Fibular osteotomy with ATFL/CFL release: 46.6 mm (94.6%). All osteotomies provided greater exposure than anterolateral arthrotomy with ATFL release (p < 0.0001). A significant difference was obtained between each of the fibular osteotomies and tibial osteotomy (p < 0.0001). Differences between the fibular osteotomy approaches (3 to 5) were not significant. Conclusion Fibular osteotomy provides the greatest perpendicular exposure to the posterolateral talar dome. Anterolateral tibial osteotomy provides greater exposure than arthrotomy alone. Clinical Relevance This study provides a guide for surgical exposures to the posterolateral talar dome for osteochondral autograft transfer.


Serious violent crime is a persistent and significant criminal justice issue (see Eisner, 2003; Fuller, 2013; Truman, Langton, & Planty, 2013; Wallace et al., 2009). In 2003 and 2008, the Australian Institute of Criminology delivered a clear message: despite the relatively low number of incidents compared to non - violent crime, serious v iolent crime offences account for a substantial portion of the costs of crime in Australia (Mayhew, 2003; Rollings, 2008). Moreover, a number of scholars have demonstrated a decline in police clearance of serious violent crime over recent decades ( Horvath et al., 2001; Litwin & Xu, 2007; Riedel, 2008 ). Although investigation and responding to serious violent crime are core components of police work , the evidence - base for police investigative techniques for serious violent crime lacks the level of evaluation and synthesis seen for other policing interventions which have been predominantly assessed according to their impact on general crime and disorder.

This systematic review aims to redress this imbalance by conducting the first ever systematic review focusing on the effectiveness of techniques that police use to investigate serious violent crime. Our review examine s the evidence on police investigative techniques for serious violent crime to determine what works, what doesn't, and for what crime types. Specifically, we systematically evaluate the impact of police investigative techniques on key police outcomes in the context of serious violent crime: off ender identification, arrests, elicitation of confessions, convictions and case closure .


Introduction: This study aimed to predict the burnout of teachers based on the dimensions of spiritual intelligence. Method: Research method was descriptive-correlational. The statistical population included all high school teachers of Behbahan city (N=450). Sample size (n=208) was determined using Morgan table and the sample was selected using stratified random sampling method. Maslach Burnout Inventory (2002) and Spiritual Intelligence Questionnaire Sohrabi and Naseri (2009) were used for data collection. Simple linear and multivariate regression was used for data collection. Findings: Data analysis showed that there is a reverse and significant correlation between Spiritual Intelligence and burnout and 18% of the variance of burnout variable is covered by the variable of the Spiritual Intelligence. Data analysis also showed that of the four dimensions of Spiritual Intelligence, the component of Transcendental Consciousness with (β= -0.285 ,p <0.05) is the most capable component predicting burnout and after that, the component of patience with (β= -0.186 ,p <0.05) is in the second place and the two dimensions of Mercy(Forgiveness) with (β= -0.088 ,p <0.05) and Spiritual experiences with (β= -0.057 ,p <0.05) were not able to predict burnout. Conclusion: The results of this study indicate that by increasing teachers' Spiritual Intelligence, their burnout reduces. Therefore, educational authorities are required to strengthen teachers' Spiritual Intelligence to reduce their burnout.


Along with the growth of awareness in the society about 'Green Living' nowadays, more and more business development of housing projects in Jakarta which brings the topic of 'Green Estate' as their brand and branding strategy. Green Estate is a sustainably developed housing with the attention to aspects of energy saving, the provision of environmentally friendly infrastructure, the provision of green open spaces, waste management, environmentally friendly building design, the provision of alternative energy and citizen participation. Branding is a strategy, method, way or effort to convey a product brand to consumers so that the product is known and then widely consumed by the community. It is important to explore the extent to which the brand and branding strategy on the topic of 'Green Estate' is involved in the practice of developing a housing project in Jakarta, and how its implementation into the real product. This paper discusses the results of research on the brand and branding of 'Green Estate' in the housing project in Jakarta, covering three things: (1) mapping the type and coverage of the brand 'Green Estate', (2) exploring the branding strategy by the developer in communicating the product 'Green Estate 'to consumers, and (3) the implementation of brand and branding strategy 'Green Estate' into the product. This research uses a mixed method, that is the quantitative method by utilizing housing data in REI directory book; and qualitative methods through direct observation of selected housing samples.


Software Defined networking (SDN) is a new approach for the design and management of computer networks. The main concept behind SDN is the separation of the network's control and forwarding planes with the control plane moved to the centralized controller. In SDN networks with the centralized controller structure DDoS attacks can easily exhaust the controller's or the switches' computing and communication resources, thus, breakdown the network within a short time.
In this thesis, the scheme, running at the controller, can detect DDoS attacks at the early stage. The method not only can detect the attacks but also identify the attacking paths and start a mitigation process to provide some degree of protection of the network devices the moment an attack is detected. The Proposed method is based on the Entropy variation of destination IP address, Flow initiation rate and study of the Flow specifications.


Cluster heterogeneity increases the difficulty of balancing the load across the system nodes. Although the relationship between heterogeneity and load balancing is difficult to describe analytically, in this paper an exhaustive analysis of the effects of this system feature on load balancing algorithms performance is presented. Considering the performed analysis, there are two main challenges that need to be faced when dealing with cluster heterogeneity in load balancing algorithms: one related to the state measurement stage and another to the initiation rule. In this paper techniques to deal with heterogeneity in these two algorithm stages are proposed. Furthermore, suggestions to improve the performance of the rest of algorithm stages in heterogeneous environments are made too


Al doped LiMn2O4 powders were prepared by spray pyrolysis using the aqueous solution of manganese carbonate. The aqueous solution, in which manganese carbonate was uniformly dispersed by a surfactant, was used as the starting solution. Al2O3 nanopowders, Al(OH)3 and Al(NO3)3·9H2O were used as the doping agent of Al. A scanning electron microscope photograph showed that Al doped LiMn2O4 powders had spherical morphology with broad particle size distribution. X-ray diffraction revealed that crystal phase of all samples were good agreement with spinel phase. The rechargeable capacity of Al doped LiMn2O4 cathode was about 110 mAh/g at 1 C regardless of doping agent. 75% of initial discharge capacity was maintained after 100 cycles


Following the seminal work of Zheng and Tse, this paper investigates the fundamental diversity and multiplexing tradeoff of multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems in which knowledge of the channel state at both sides of the link is employed to transmit independent data streams through the channel eigenmodes. First, the fundamental diversity and multiplexing tradeoff of each of the individual substreams is obtained and this result is then used to derive a tradeoff optimal scheme for rate allocation along channel eigenmodes. The tradeoff of spatial multiplexing is finally compared to the fundamental tradeoff of the MIMO channel and to the one of both space only codes and V-BLAST which do not require channel state information (CSI) at the transmit side.


Abstract Recently, interest in smart packaging, which can show the color change of the packaging film according to the state of the food and evaluate the quality or freshness of the packaged food in real-time, is increasing. As a color indicator, a natural colorant, anthocyanin, drew a lot of attention due to their various colors as well as useful functions properties such as antioxidant activity and anti-carcinogenic and anti-inflammatory effects, prevention of cardiovascular disease, obesity, and diabetes. In particular, the pH-responsive color-changing function of anthocyanins is useful for making color indicator smart packaging films. This review addressed the latest information on the use of natural pigment anthocyanins for intelligent and active food packaging applications. Recent studies on eco-friendly biodegradable polymer-based color indicator films incorporated with anthocyanins have been addressed. Also, studies on the use of smart packaging films to monitor the freshness of foods such as milk, meat, and fish were reviewed. This review highlights the potential and challenges for the use of anthocyanins as pH-responsive color-changing films for intelligent food packaging applications, which may be beneficial for further development of smart color indicator films for practical use.


New mobile networks and new devices like smartphones and tablets are rapidly changing opportunities for public sector units delivering smart, mobile e-services to their citizens. Moreover, the upcoming HTML5 standard allows for cross-device and cross-browser support making service development and deployment much more easier than before at lower costs. This paper analyzes the most important features of HTML5, CSS3, and WebGL and their applicability for mobile e-services in the public sector. Also, we present a novel architecture for mobile e-services using HTML5, mashups, and RESTful web APIs as important building blocks.


A method of knowledge generation as part of a shape-understanding method is presented. The proposed method of knowledge generation consists of: learning the description of new a posteriori classes, learning the concept of visual objects, and generation of the visual representation of "inner" objects. The visual concept, as part of the concept of the visual object, is expressed as a set of symbolic names that refers to possible classes of shape. The visual concept can be used to find the visual similarities between different visual objects, perform visual transformations as part of visual thinking capabilities of a system, and memorize a visual object as a symbolic representation. The knowledge obtained in the process of knowledge generation is integrated with an existing knowledge of a shape understanding system and used in the explanatory process. This system of shape understanding (SUS), that is, the implementation of the shape understanding method, is designed to imitate the visual thinking capabilities of the human visual system. The SUS consists of different types of experts that perform different processing and reasoning tasks and is designed to perform visual diagnosis in medical applications.


It is generally acknowledged in science and engineering education research that students have prior knowledge about how the world works, such as preconceptions and misconceptions and in order create, develop, or restructure instructional materials and activities, they must be informed by that prior knowledge. In a sense, prior knowledge in a classroom setting consists of, in addition to preconceptions and misconceptions, knowledge gaps, limited language skills, and varying analytical, computational, and graphical skills. As found in science education, effective instructional materials and classroom practice are informed by and address information from broad formative assessment of foundational knowledge of students learning new content. In engineering education, instruction must build on this idea to teach students not only about scientific phenomena, but also application of scientific phenomena to engineering applications. In this research, teaching and learning materials and activities that do this have been informed by such assessment results. In this paper we report on the research question, "How can instructional materials be modified to address and assess misconception and knowledge gap identification and repair from formative and summative assessments in an introductory materials class?" Information from a materials concept inventory, pre-post topic concept question sets, team activities, and classroom dialogue have been used to remodel class notes. Students learned concepts by connecting a real-world artifact's macroscopic properties to its internal atomic and microscopic structural characteristics with multiple representations of the linkages. Application of analogical reasoning and cognitive dissonance learning tools were incorporated in class notes and team activities to promote conceptual change. Incorporating hard data in "explain and predict activities" forces students to address anomalies in their mental models and revise and remodel their conceptual framework in a given topical area. Effective instructional materials can not only address student issues, but also inform instructor practice to enhance his/her pedagogical content knowledge. Two examples are given in this paper about a knowledge gap and a misconception. One is for an atomic bonding knowledge gap about van der Waals bonding and associated misconceptions related to polymer properties. The other is about metallic bonding and students' representation of image and function of bonding in metals. Approaches to addressing these issues are illustrated with implementation of informed instructional materials, activities, and tools in the classroom. These will be presented and discussed in detail in the paper with the goal of illustrating possible pathways to broader implementation of innovative pedagogy by more instructors and possibly other engineering disciplines.


Algorithmic skeletons, introduced by Cole, were designed to ease the development of parallel software. This article presents a way to represent and implement algorithmic skeletons using bones - atomic elements - to build structures, and data flow graphs to link the structures. We design and implement a library relying on Template Metaprogramming (TMP) to describe and use both skeletons and links to produce automatically either a sequential or a parallel implementation of the algorithm, aiming slight to no run-time overhead compared to handwritten implementations. Performance results of this library, applied to metaheuristics in Operations Research (OR), are presented to show that this approach induces negligible run-time overhead.


Ground anchors have been very practical in a wide range of geotechnical structures. Good bond properties at the anchor-mortar and mortar-rock interfaces can ensure transmitting an applied tensile load to a load bearing structure efficiently. The bond performance between the mortar and rock is necessary to be studied. A push-out test of mortar from rock block can be used to analyze the interfacial properties between the two materials. In this paper, an analytical model is proposed to determine the push-out capacity of mortar from rock block. Based on the deformation compatibility at the interface, the compressive stress in the mortar and the interfacial shear stress at the mortar-rock interface are formulated at different loading stages. By modeling interfacial debonding as an interfacial shear crack, the push-out load is then expressed as a function of the interfacial crack length. In virtue of the Lagrange Multiplier Method, the maximum push-out load is determined. The validity of the proposed model is verified with the experimental results. It can be concluded that if the interfacial parameters at the mortar-rock interface are obtained, the push-out capacity of mortar from rock block can be accurately determined using the proposed model. The proposed solution in this paper would provide a good theoretical basis in evaluating the stability of ground anchors in practice.


High-level wastes (HLW) can be incorporated in the crystal lattices of coexisting phases in ceramic waste forms. The properties and performances of ceramic waste forms are largely determined by their phase chemistry, phase assemblage and microstructure. Currently, the best categorized advanced ceramic waste form is SYNROC, a titanate ceramic composed of ' hollandite ' Bat 1(Al,Ti)2^Ti|]*"70 16, zirconolite CaZrTi2O7, perovskite CaTiO3, rutile TiO2 and minor amounts of metal alloys microencapsulated by the titanate matrix. Two factors contribute to the capacity of synroc to accommodate high (e.g. 20% ) loadings of HLW, together with variations in waste-stream composition. Firstly, the constituent phases can accept, as solid solutions in their crystal lattices, a broad spectrum of cationic species of diverse charge and radius, either singly or by complex substitution mechanisms. Secondly, the phase assemblage itself spontaneously adjusts its modal mineralogy in response to waste stream fluctuations. The presence of both rutile and a source of trivalent titanium (from reaction of rutile with added Ti metal) in the synroc phase assemblage is largely responsible for this flexible and accommodating nature. The titanate minerals in synroc also occur in Nature, where they have survived for many millions of years in a wide range of geological environments. Experimental studies show that synroc is vastly more resistant to leaching by groundwater than borosilicate glass; moreover, its high leach resistance is maintained at elevated temperatures. Experimental and analogue studies indicate that the HLW immobilization properties of synroc are not significantly impaired by radiation damage. These properties show that synroc would provide an effective immobilization barrier for HLW when buried in suitable repositories. They also permit the use of a wider range of geological disposal options than are appropriate for borosilicate glass. In particular, synroc is well suited for disposal in deep drill-holes, both in continental and marine environments. The fact that synroc is composed of minerals that have demonstrated long-term geological stability is important in establishing public confidence in the ability of the nuclear industry to immobilize high-level wastes for the very long periods required.


Trovafloxacin, once administrated by oral route, is rapidly absorbed and reaches its maximum seric concentration in about one hour. Alatrofloxacin is the prodrug, that is rapidly hydrolyzed to its original state when administered intravenously. Its bioavailability is equivalent when administered either oral or intravenously. It is a fluoroquinolone of extensive in vitro spectrum, with a higher activity for Gram positive coccus, anaerobic and atypical pneumonia-producing bacteria. The average half-life is around eleven hours, with an enhanced protein bound that allows to administrate it only once a day. The renal excretion is under 8%; it doesn't require any doses adjustment in renal insufficiency. Trovafloxacin reaches higher tissue and intracelular concentrations than classic fluoroquinolones. All these pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic characteristics allow to consider trovafloxacin as an interesting drug for the treatment of mixed infections or those resistant to the first line drugs.


An artificial neural network system for traffic sign recognition is proposed in the paper. The input image is first processed for extraction of color and geometric information. A morphological filter is applied to increase the saliency by eliminating smaller objects and by linking together objects broken in disjoint parts due to noise. The coordinates of the resulting objects are determined, and the objects are isolated from the original image according to these coordinates. After this, the objects are normalized and sent to the neural network which performs the recognition. The neural network consists of classification subnetwork, winner-takes-all subnetwork (Hopfield network), and validation subnetwork. By introducing the new concept of a validation sub-network, the network enhance the capability to correctly classify the different traffic signs and avoid misclassifying nontraffic signs into a traffic sign. The system is tested by simulation as a whole and in part on a large amount of data acquired by a video camera attached to a vehicle frame by frame. The performance is encouraging. It produced excellent results except for the images under very poor illumination such that the color threshold (preprocessing) fails to extract the color information.


The penetration of bacteriophage T7 DNA into F plasmid-containing Escherichia coli cells was determined by measuring Dam methylation of the entering genome. T7 strains that cannot productively infect F-containing cells fail to completely translocate their DNA into the cell before the infection aborts. The entry of the first 44% of the genome occurs normally in an F-containing cell, but the entry of the remainder is aberrant. Bypassing the normal mode of entry of the T7 genome by transfecting naked DNA into competent cells fails to suppress F exclusion of phage development. However, overexpression of various nontoxic T7 1.2 alleles from a high-copy-number plasmid or expression of T3 1.2 from a T7 genome allows phage growth in the presence of F.


We study implementations of the bottom-left heuristic for two-dimensional bin-packing. To pack N rectangles into an infinite vertical strip of fixed width, the strategy considered here places each rectangle in turn as low as possible in the strip in a left-justified position. For reasons of simplicity and good performance, the bottom-left heuristic has long been a favorite in practical applications; however, the best implementations found so far require a number of steps O(N3). In this paper, we present an implementation of the bottom-left heuristic which requires linear space and quadratic time. The algorithm is fairly practical, and we believe that even for relatively small values of N, it gives the most efficient implementation of the heuristic, to date. It proceeds by first determining all the possible locations where the next rectangle can fit, then selecting the lowest of them. It is optimal among all the algorithms based on this exhaustive strategy, and its generality makes it adaptable to different packing heuristics.


Modeling of Panel Zone (PZ) seismic behavior, because of its role in overall ductility and lateral stiffness of steel moment frames, has been considered a challenge for years. There are some studies regarding the effects of different doubler plates thicknesses and geometric properties of PZ on its seismic behavior. However, there is not much investigation on the effects of number of provided continuity plates in case of presence of one triangular haunch, two triangular haunches and rectangular haunch (T shape haunches) for exterior columns. In this research first detailed finite element models of 12tested connection of SAC joint venture were created and analyzed then obtained cyclic behavior backbone curves of these models besides other FE models for similar tests were used for neural network training. Then seismic behavior of these data is categorized according to continuity plate's arrangements and differences in type of haunches. PZ with one-sided haunches have little plastic rotation. As the number of continuity plates increases due to presence of two triangular haunches (four continuity plate), there will be no plastic rotation, in other words PZ behaves in its elastic range. In the case of rectangular haunch, PZ show more plastic rotation in comparison with one-sided triangular haunch and especially double-sided triangular haunches. Moreover, the models that will be presented in case of triangular one-sided and doublesided haunches and rectangular haunches as a result of this study seem to have a proper estimation of PZ seismic behavior. Keywords—Continuity plate, FE models, Neural network, Panel zone, Plastic rotation, Rectangular haunch, Seismic behavior


Sensitivity to print is characterized by a left occipito-temporal negativity to words in the event-related potential N1. This sensitivity is modulated by reading skills and may thus represent a neural marker of reading competence. Here we studied the development of the N1 in regular and poor readers from preschool age to school age to test whether the amplitude of the N1 predicts children's reading outcomes. Our results suggest a predictive value of the print-sensitive negativity over the right hemisphere. Whether this N1 may serve as a biomarker to improve prognosis in preliterate children should be clarified in future studies.


To determine whether an initial ovine corticotropin-releasing factor (oCRF) injection modifies adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) and cortisol responses to a second injection and to establish whether the effect changes throughout gestation, we studied chronically cannulated fetal lambs of 103-113 and 133-137 days gestation. Experimental groups underwent an injection (500 ng/kg iv) of oCRF, arterial blood sampling for 6 h, then a similar oCRF injection followed by sampling. In control studies, vehicle was the initial injection. After the first oCRF injection, plasma cortisol levels went from 1.7 +/- 0.4 to 9.5 +/- 5.2 (SE) ng/ml ("immature") and from 22.3 +/- 4.9 to 52.5 +/- 5.8 ng/ml ("mature"), remaining elevated for 6 h. In immature fetuses, the first oCRF injection did not alter the ACTH response to a second injection. Cortisol increases were reduced. In mature animals, ACTH and cortisol response to oCRF were eliminated by prior oCRF. Thus a large increase in cortisol after oCRF in mature fetuses is associated with inhibition of the ACTH response to a second oCRF injection, whereas in immature animals a small increase in cortisol after the first oCRF injection is not.


A combinatorial complex multiplier has been designed for use in a pipelined fast Fourier transform processor. The performance in terms of throughput of the processor is limited by the multiplication. Therefore, the multiplier is optimized to make the input-to-output delay as short as possible. A new architecture based on distributed arithmetic, Wallace-trees, and carry-lookahead adders has been developed. The multiplier has been fabricated using standard cells in a 0.5-/spl mu/m process and verified for functionality, speed, and power consumption. Running at 40 MHz, a multiplier with input wordlengths of 16+16 times 10+10 bits consumes 54% less power compared to an distributed arithmetic array multiplier fabricated under equal conditions.


This Editorial highlights a study by Hunsberger et al. (2015) in the current issue of Journal of Neurochemistry, in which the authors explore the effects of riluzole treatment on tau P301L transgenic mice. The authors employed a comprehensive analysis of possible restorative effects of the drug by examining glutamate levels in subregions of the hippocampus, expression of tau and its hyper-phosphorylated forms, and memory function using behavioral tests. The authors report a simultaneous reduction in glutamate reuptake and an increase in glutamate release in the P301L model, both of which are ameliorated with riluzole treatment. The authors' findings have implications for our understanding of Alzheimer's disease pathology. Both experimental and clinical studies indicate that impaired excitatory synaptic transmission, which ultimately culminates in hypoactivity, is a hallmark feature of EDITORIAL HIGHLIGHT for JNC-2015-0157.R1 2 Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology. Intriguingly, studies also find that AD patients have a propensity for epileptic seizures, and various in vitro cellular models of AD pathology display hyperactive and dyssynchronous network function (Palop and Mucke, 2010). Taken together, this suggests the coexistence of hyperand hypoactivity, which perhaps varies by brain region, neuronal subtype and/or stage of disease (Busche and Konnerth, 2015). Glutamate is the major excitatory neurotransmitter in the brain, and so its production, secretion and clearance are all tightly regulated cellular processes. Dysregulation of glutamate could be critical in the expression of aberrant network activity in AD (Rudy et al., 2015). However, the underlying mechanisms have not yet been established. A key component of AD pathology is a change to the microtubule-associated protein (MAP) tau. The protein, which canonically functions to stabilize microtubules, becomes hyperphosphorylated in the disease, leading to formation of aggregates termed pairedhelical filaments (PHF), which are considered neurotoxic. Though first thought of as a predominantly neuronal axon protein, growing evidence now suggests that tau is also present in other subcellular compartments, such as dendritic spines (Kimura et al., 2014), as well as in glial cells. Under pathological conditions tau seems to accumulate in astrocytes (Berry et al., 2001). However, the physiological role for tau in glial cells is yet to be fully characterised. A number of mutations to the tau gene have been identified as risk factors for hereditary tauopathy (Wolfe, 2009). One such is the P301L mutation, which has been explored in detail following the generation of a doxycycline-suppressed transgenic mutant mouse (SantaCruz et al., 2005). The exact toxicity of this tau mutation may be due to the reduced binding affinity with microtubules and a propensity for aggregation (Hong et al., 1998). One of the clear advantages of this model is the delayed onset of tauopathy, avoiding potential confounding factors that may arise if pathological tau were to be expressed during development, and perhaps more closely following the late-onset nature of tauopathy in human AD. However, it is important to acknowledge that the P301L model, focusing on tau expression, does not consider any significant contribution from amyloid beta, widely considered to partner hyperphosphorylated tau in driving AD pathogenesis. Thus, as is the case with many transgenic models, findings and interpretations must be caveated. EDITORIAL HIGHLIGHT for JNC-2015-0157.R1 3 Riluzole (2-amino-6-(trifluoromethoxy) benzothiazole) functions as a sodium channel blocker, and is a US Food and Drug Administration-approved disease-modifying drug for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). A number of studies have now established that riluzole exerts anti-glutamatergic effects, through the inhibition of presynaptic glutamate release and enhancement of glutamate transporter activity (Fumagalli et al., 2008; Grant et al., 2010). Adverse side effects associated with the drug are generally considered relatively mild. One of the more frequently reported effects is an increase in levels of transaminases. However, given that most clinical data has come from studies with ALS patients, and the condition itself is generally fatal, there is currently limited understanding of what the possible implications of long-term use of the drug are (Grant et al., 2010). In this issue, Hunsberger et al. (2015) explore the effects of riluzole treatment on tau P301L transgenic mice. The authors employed a comprehensive analysis of possible restorative effects of the drug by examining: (i) glutamate levels in subregions of the hippocampus, (ii) expression of tau and its hyper-phosphorylated forms, and (iii) memory function using behavioral tests. The authors report a simultaneous reduction in glutamate reuptake and an increase in glutamate release in the P301L model, both of which are ameliorated with riluzole treatment. It remains to be explored whether one of these functions is more important than the other in contributing to the pathology of the disease. Interestingly, whilst the authors observed an increase in tonic and KCl-induced glutamate levels in the P301L mice, this was only present in the CA3 and CA1 regions of the hippocampus, not the dentate gyrus, indicative of some regional differences in vulnerability to a presumably tau-mediated dysregulation of glutamate processing. Such differences in propensity for succumbing to pathological dysregulation have been explored in previous studies (Small et al., 2011). Histological studies indicate that the entorhinal cortex is severely affected in AD, with similar pervasive cell death noted in the CA1 and subicular regions of the hippocampus. However, the CA3 remains relatively unaffected by comparison (Small et al., 2011). Relevant to the present study, there is tentative evidence (both in animal models and postmortem studies in human patients), for dentate gyrusspecific resistance to AD-related changes (Small, 2014), though more work is required to substantiate this further. The postsynaptic density protein 95 (PSD-95) forms a multimeric scaffold for the clustering of receptors, ion channels and signalling proteins at the postsynaptic density of excitatory synapses. Changes in PSD-95 expression can alter the ratio of excitatory to inhibitory EDITORIAL HIGHLIGHT for JNC-2015-0157.R1 4 synapses. Furthermore, PSD-95 interacts with N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors (NMDARs) and is required for NMDAR-mediated synaptic plasticity. The authors report that reductions in PSD-95 expression in P301L tau transgenic mouse brains are prevented by riluzole treatment. Whilst the normalization of PSD-95 levels is certainly indicative of restoration of excitatory synapses, such an assertion cannot really be made until further examination of more discrete components of the synapse under these conditions has been performed. Changes in, for example, glutamate receptor expression or subunit composition have significant impact on synaptic function, and so the capacity for riluzole to regulate these will also be of critical importance to consider in the future. The authors note that trying to understand the mechanisms that mediate the increase in tonic and KCl-induced levels of glutamate in the P301L transgenic mice will be carried out in future studies. The outstanding question here is a fundamental one; why does the expression of a mutant form of tau lead to impaired glutamate processing? Answering this question could well be pivotal in our understanding of the links between a developing AD pathology and hyperexcitabilty in the brain. Growing evidence is beginning to outline novel physiological roles for tau in neurons, particularly in the regulation of excitatory synaptic transmission (Kimura et al., 2014; Regan et al., 2015). Perhaps in addition to these, tau also forms part of the glia-based mechanism responsible for glutamate processing, for example regulating the expression and/or function of glutamate transporters. Indeed, there is some tentative evidence to suggest that tau interacts with excitatory amino acid transporter 2 (EAAT2) in human AD brain tissue (Sasaki et al., 2009). Further work will now be required to assess the components of the glutamate regulating system that tau interacts with, both physiologically and pathologically. Acknowledgement and conflict of interest disclosure EM's research is supported by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, UK (grant BB/J015938/1). EM is an editor for Journal of Neurochemistry. References Berry R. W., Quinn B., Johnson N., Cochran E. J., Ghoshal N. and Binder L. I. (2001) Pathological glial tau accumulations in neurodegenerative disease: review and case report. Neurochem. Int. 39, 469-479. EDITORIAL HIGHLIGHT for JNC-2015-0157.R1 5 Busche M. A. and Konnerth A. (2015) Neuronal hyperactivity A key defect in Alzheimer's disease? Bioessays 37, 624-632. Fumagalli E., Funicello M., Rauen T., Gobbi M and Mennini T. (2008) Riluzole enhances the activity of glutamate transporters GLAST, GLT1 and EAAC1. Eur. J. Pharmacol. 578, 171–176. Grant P., Song J. Y. and Swedo S. E. (2010) Review of the use of the glutamate antagonist riluzole in psychiatric disorders and a description of recent use in childhood obsessive-compulsive disorder. Child Adolesc. Psychopharmacol. 20, 309–315. Hong M., Zhukareva V., Vogelsberg-Ragaglia V., Wszolek Z., Reed L., Miller B. I., Geschwind D. H., Bird T. D., McKeel D., Goate A., Morris J. C., Wilhelmsen K. C., Schellenberg G. D., Trojanowski J. Q. and Lee V. M. Y. (1998) Mutation-specific functional impairments in distinct tau isoforms of hereditary FTDP-17. Science 282, 1914-1917. Hunsberger H. C., Weitzner D. S., Rudy C. C., Hickman J. E., Libell E. M., Speer R., Gerhardt G. A. and Reed M. N. (2015) Riluzole rescues glutamate alterations, cognitive deficits, and tau pathology associated with P301L tau expression. J. Neuro


MUNICH-- Ever since U.S. researchers revealed last year that they had created "immortal" lines of human embryonic stem (ES) cells--a type of cell extracted from an embryo that can be tweaked to grow into any form of human tissue--teams around the world have been eager to use ES cells to grow tissues for transplant. But creating ES cell lines requires researchers to destroy an embryo, so research is either heavily restricted or banned altogether in many countries. One hope was that lines of embryonic germ cells, which are taken from aborted fetal tissue, could be used instead. But results presented at a workshop on stem cell and nuclear transfer research here last month have dampened those hopes.


The purpose of the study was to examine students' participation in career guidance activities as mechanism through which young adults are developed into productive, responsible personalities well equipped for life and work in today's technology based society. The study focused on career information search, career exploration and assessment aspects of participation. Thus, the findings would help the stakeholders, policy makers and educators in improving the career guidance in schools for effective delivery. Data were collected on 387 participants through 4 Likert scale questionnaires and descriptive statistic, independent ttests and multiple regression analysis were performed. The results revealed that participation in career guidance activities is generally low and no significant difference existed in the pattern of participation among genders. The predictors were determined and implications of the study are discussed.


Most central banks now implement monetary policy by trying to hit a target overnight interest rate using one of two types of frameworks. The first involves arrangements for depository institutions to hold a minimum account balance over a multi-day averaging period. The second uses the central bank's lending rate as a ceiling and its deposit rate as a floor for overnight interest rates. Either averaging or a rate corridor can help a central bank hit a target interest rate, but each framework can also have weaknesses in achieving that goal and, in some cases, other associated drawbacks. This paper discusses an alternative possible policy implementation regime, involving a specially designed facility for the payment of interest on a daily basis on balances held at the central bank. This new type of regime could potentially allow smooth monetary policy implementation without the problems associated with averaging or a rate corridor.


The internet affords enormous amounts of destination and accommodation information. A key tool relied upon to navigate the medium is the search engine. As such, accommodation marketers, primary target beneficiaries of this research, seek greater understanding of how search engine travel inquiries are conducted. Such knowledge would better inform online marketing campaigns and allow for more effective use of limited marketing dollars. This study analyzed 701 Excite.com accommodation search queries in order to identify such trends. The results suggest that travelers most often search for their accommodations simultaneously with other aspects of their travel, such as destinations, attractions, transportation and dining; and that most commence their search by seeking specific hotels in conjunction with their destination city. A sequential analysis also revealed the prevalence of switching behavior, with searches often reflecting swings between broad and focused research tacks. Marketing implications of these findings are discussed.


Philosophers of ethics and those who are involved in the debates concerning Medical Ethics have discussed the issue of human dignity and its cluster of meaning from different angles and have suggested many interesting points in this respect. However, a cursory glance at the published works in this field reveals that most of those writers who have contributed to this issue have either based their arguments on notions such as rights or justice, or have used theological doctrines, or have conducted their debates within the frameworks of pragmatic or particularistic ethics. In the present paper, I shall approach the issue from a new viewpoint which is mostly inspired and informed by the ideas of some analytic philosophers. The main argument of the paper revolves around the pivotal notion of "value of life". All those who take positions vis-a-vis stem-cell researches and the morality or otherwise of using embryos for such investigations, or those who form opinions concerning the ethicality or otherwise of abortion, or those who try to find satisfactory solutions for the vexing issue of the allocation of limited medical resources, maintain, at least in an intuitive way, that the life of a human organism, in whatever shape or form, has intrinsic value. The life of such an organism whether it is a newly conceived egg or an embryo ready to be implanted in the womb or a foetus whose neurological system has just emerged, or a morally fallen adult, is intrinsically valuable. The idea that some things or events are valuable in themselves, namely, we respect them not because they serve our interests but because they are intrinsically valuable, is a familiar intuition. We have developed this 'intuition' through our long existential experiences. Now if we reflect upon this very intuition we will be able to discover further layers of meaning in it. For example, we realize that from the belief that 'human's life is intrinsically valuable' one cannot conclude that one should multiply human life as much as possible. On the contrary, some of our other intuitions would inform us that at least some parts of the world would be better off if less populated than crowded. Thus the question arises that if the intrinsic value of human life does not mean its multiplication, then how the continuation of human life, once it has appeared, can have intrinsic value? In the present paper I shall try to use the apparatus of analytic philosophy to explore the ways of reconciliation between the two seemingly contradictory notions of 'the intrinsic value of life' and 'the morality of sacrificing life under particular circumstances'.


Multiple conjugation of virus-binding ligands to multivalent carriers is a prominent strategy to construct highly affine virus binders for the inhibition of viral entry into host cells. In a previous study, we introduced rationally designed sialic acid conjugates of bacteriophages (Qβ) that match the triangular binding site geometry on hemagglutinin spike proteins of influenza A virions, resulting in effective infection inhibition in vitro and in vivo. In this work, we demonstrate that even partially sialylated Qβ conjugates retain the inhibitory effect despite reduced activity. These observations not only support the importance of trivalent binding events in preserving high affinity, as supported by computational modeling, but also allow us to construct heterobifunctional modalities. Capsids carrying two different sialic acid ligand–linker structures showed higher viral inhibition than their monofunctional counterparts. Furthermore, capsids carrying a fluorescent dye in addition to sialic acid ligands were used to track their interaction with cells. These findings support exploring broader applications as multivalent inhibitors in the future.


This paper studies the effect of two labor market institutions, unemployment insurance (UI) and job search assistance (JSA), on the output cost and welfare cost of recessions. The paper develops a tractable incomplete-market model with search unemployment, skill depreciation during unemployment, and idiosyncratic as well as aggregate labor market risk. The theoretical analysis shows that an increase in JSA and a reduction in UI reduce the output cost of recessions by making the labor market more fluid along the job finding margin and thus making the economy more resilient to macroeconomic shocks. In contarst, the effect of JSA and UI on the welfare cost of recessions is in general ambiguous. The paper also provides a quantitative appliation to the German labor market reforms of 2003-2005, the so-called Hartz reforms, which improved JSA (Hartz III reform) and reduced UI (Hartz IV reform). According to the baseline calibration, the two labor market reforms led to a substantial reduction in the output cost of recessions and a moderate reduction in the welfare cost of recessions in Germany. JEL Classification Numbers: E21, E24, D52, J24


Two mechanisms operating at 0.03-0.05 and 0.1-0.2 Hz are involved in autoregulation of renal blood flow (RBF). To examine the behavior of the faster system, the response of RBF to spontaneous fluctuations of arterial pressure was assessed in Sprague-Dawley rats anesthetized by isoflurane or halothane. During halothane anesthesia, autonomous oscillation of total RBF was observed at 0.10-0.15 Hz, and normalized admittance gain became negative at 0.11 +/- 0.01 Hz. During isoflurane anesthesia, there was autonomous power in blood flow in a broad peak between 0.15 and 0.25 Hz, and gain became negative at 0.15 +/- 0.01 Hz. Increasing inspired isoflurane concentration from 1.4 +/- 0.1% to 2.2 +/- 0.1% reduced pressure by 22 +/- 2 mmHg but did not alter blood flow or the transfer function, indicating that the operating frequency was not changed. In another experiment, changing from isoflurane to halothane increased peak power in the autonomous blood flow oscillation fivefold and reduced its frequency from 0.18 +/- 0.01 to 0.14 +/- 0.01 Hz. Gain became negative at a higher frequency (0.16 +/- 0.01 Hz) during isoflurane than halothane anesthesia (0.12 +/- 0.01 Hz). The results show that the 0.1-0.2 Hz system is reliably detected under unforced conditions and provides modest attenuation of pressure fluctuations at < or = 0.1 Hz. Its operating frequency under isoflurane anesthesia is consistent with previous estimates from barbiturate-anesthetized rats, whereas it operates significantly slower under halothane anesthesia.


As real-time systems have become more and more complex, architects rely on abstract models of computation in order to design and analyse these systems. In order to ease the production of source code that respects such models of computation, developper can take advantage of code generators and/or middleware. However, when analyzing an abstract model of computation, timing overheads due to generated code or middleware components are not taken into account. Answering this issue is even more problematic in the domain of embedded systems because of the variability of execution platforms. To tackle this problem, we present in this paper a model refinement and timing analysis framework: abstract models of computation are first transformed in more precise models, which include the timing characteristics of the execution platform. These refined models are then used for a more precise timing analysis. The experiment results we present in this paper show that our method can deal with realistic software architecture of real-time systems.


Multi-frequency processing methods are applied to real data generated by explosives to examine the variability of geometric and environmental parameter estimates. The frequencies are combined in an incoherent fashion and genetic algorithms are employed in an efficient global search scheme. The source coordinates, the water depth at the source and the receiver location, and the tilt of the vertical array are estimated as functions of the number of frequencies processed. Using three different processing schemes, it is found that when less than ten frequencies are employed the estimates are unstable, whereas after this critical number a constant estimation level is attained. The localization performance of a multi-frequency version of the Bartlett processor i s also examined. The degradation of the results due to a non-optimized environment is demonstrated. The source resolution is shown to be improved when the search for the source coordinates incorporates simultaneous estimation of the environmental parameters.


We focus on full-rate, fast-decodable space-time block codes (STBCs) for 2 times 2 and 4times2 multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission. We first derive conditions and design criteria for reduced-complexity maximum-likelihood (ML) decodable 2times2 STBCs, and we apply them to two families of codes that were recently discovered. Next, we derive a novel reduced-complexity 4times2 STBC, and show that it outperforms all previously known codes with certain constellations.


While the role of emotional antecedents of effective selling behavior would be important, the issue has not been fully addressed in the sales literature. To fill this gap, we conceptualize and empirically examine the relationships among salesperson``s emotional regulation processes such as emotional intelligence (EI) and emotional labor (EL), effective selling behavior, and sales performance on the basis of educational, occupational, social psychology literature and marketing literature (e.g., Henning-Thurau, Groth, Paul, and Gremler 2006; Kidwell et al. 2011; Liu et al. 2008; Mayer, Salovey, and Caruso 2008). First, salesperson``s EI is defined as his or her capability that enables correct perceptions about emotional situations in sales interactions. The EI is expected to work as psychological resources for different types of EL (i.e., deep acting and surface acting) to be performed by salesperson as emotional expression strategies (e.g., Lie et al. 2008). It is, then, expected that the features of EL selected by the salesperson would lead to different levels of adaptive selling behavior (ASB) and thereby sales performance (Monaghan 2006). Further, given that salesperson``s customer orientation (CO) is found to be an important correlate of ASB (Franke and Park 2006), it is expected that CO would moderate the relationship between EL and ASB (Rozell, Pettijohn, and Parker 2004). Hence, this research attempts to shed additional light on emotionally-driven (EL) as well as cognitively-driven (CO) antecedents of ASB (Frank and Park 2006). The findings of the survey research, done with 336 salespersons in insurance and financial companies, are summarized as follows. First, salespersons with a high level of EI are found to use both deep acting (regulating the emotions themselves) and surface acting (controlling only emotional expressions) in a versatile way, when implementing EL. Second, the more the salesperson performs deep acting, the more he or she shows ASB. It is, then, important for salespersons to use deep acting more frequently in the EL process in order to enhance the quality of interacting with customers through ASB. On the other hand, the salesperson``s surface acting did not have a significant relationship with ASB. Moreover, CO was found to moderate the relationship between the salesperson``s deep acting and ASB. That is, the context of high CO culture and individual salesperson``s deep acting would synergistically make the selling efforts adaptive to customer preferences. Conceptualizing and empirically verifying the antecedent roles of important emotional constructs such as EI and EL in salesperson``s effective selling behavior (ASB) and sales performance is a major theoretical contribution in the sales literature. Managerially, this research provides a deeper understanding on the nature of tasks performed by salespersons in service industries and a few guidelines for managing the sales force. First, sales organizations had better consciously assess EI capacity in the selection and nurturing processes of salespersons, given that EI can efficiently drive EL and the resulting effective selling behavior and performance. Further, the concept of EL could provide a framework to understand the salespersons`` emotional experiences in depth. Especially, sales organizations may well think over how to develop deep acting capabilities of their sales representatives. In this direction, the training on deep acting strategies would be an essential task for improving effective selling behavior and performance of salespersons. This kind of training had better incorporate the perspectives of customers such that many customers can actually discern whether salespersons are doing either surface acting or deep acting. Finally, based on the synergistic effects of deep acting and CO culture, how to build and sustain CO is always an ever-important task in sales organizations. While the prior sales literature has emphasized the process and structure of highly customer-oriented sales organization, our research not only corroborates the important aspects of customer-oriented sales organization, but also adds the important dimension of competent sales representatives who can resonate with customers by deep acting for sales excellence.


The proliferation of international biomedical research has stimulated growing concern regarding the potential for exploitation of vulnerable populations in low-income countries by research sponsors in high-income countries. Three sets of international guidelines on ethical biomedical research — the WMA Declaration of Helsinki, the CIOMS International Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects, and the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights — have been generated and yet none are legally binding. The UNESCO Declaration is unique among the three because it was written as an intergovernmental instrument on bioethics, intended to guide the development of novel national ethical policies worldwide, and particularly in developing nations. Policies that emphasize prescribed negotiations between the sponsoring and host countries, the mandatory inclusion of benefi t sharing for the host population after completion of the study, and the formation of local Research Ethics Committees to oversee the research from planning through completion are some examples of important steps to be taken. Creation and enforcement of policies such as these will empower developing nations to infl uence the way in which biomedical research is conducted within their borders and on their citizens.


Many human infants grow up learning more than one language simultaneously but only recently has research started to study early language acquisition in this population more systematically. The paper gives an overview on findings on early language acquisition in bilingual infants during the first two years of life and compares these findings to current knowledge on early language acquisition in monolingual infants. Given the state of the research, the overview focuses on research on phonological and early lexical development in the first two years of life. We will show that the developmental trajectory of early language acquisition in these areas is very similar in mono- and bilingual infants suggesting that these early steps into language are guided by mechanisms that are rather robust against the differences in the conditions of language exposure that mono- and bilingual infants typically experience.


Understanding smartphone users is fundamental for creating better smartphones, improving the smartphone usage experience, and generating generalizable and reproducible research. However, smartphone manufacturers and most of the mobile computing research community make a simplifying assumption that all smartphone users are similar or, at best, constitute a small number of user types, based on their behaviors. Manufacturers design phones for the broadest audience and hope they work for all users. Researchers mostly analyze data from smartphone-based user studies and report results without accounting for the many diff erent groups of people that make up the user base of smartphones. We challenge these elementary characterizations of smartphone users and show evidence of the existence of a much more diverse set of users. We analyzed one month of application usage from 106,762 Android users and discovered 382 distinct types of users based on their application usage behaviors, using our own two-step clustering and feature ranking selection approach, and gave a meaningful label to the users in each cluster, such as Screen Checkers and Young Parents. Our results have profound implications on the reproducibility and reliability of mobile computing studies, design and development of applications, determination of which apps should be pre-installed on a smartphone and, in general, on the smartphone usage experience for diff erent types of users.


In this paper, we present a learning method to solve the vehicle overtaking problem, which demands a multitude of abilities from the agent to tackle multiple criteria. To handle this problem, we propose to adopt a multiple-goal reinforcement learning (MGRL) framework as the basis of our solution. By considering seven different goals, either Q-learning (QL) or double-action QL is employed to determine action decisions based on whether the other vehicles interact with the agent for that particular goal. Furthermore, a fusion function is proposed according to the importance of each goal before arriving to an overall but consistent action decision. This offers a powerful approach for dealing with demanding situations such as overtaking, particularly when a number of other vehicles are within the proximity of the agent and are traveling at different and varying speeds. A large number of overtaking cases have been simulated to demonstrate its effectiveness. From the results, it can be concluded that the proposed method is capable of the following: 1) making correct action decisions for overtaking; 2) avoiding collisions with other vehicles; 3) reaching the target at reasonable time; 4) keeping almost steady speed; and 5) maintaining almost steady heading angle. In addition, it should also be noted that the proposed method performs lane keeping well when not overtaking and lane changing effectively when overtaking is in progress.


OBJECTIVE
To develop and test two instruments measuring decision making about level of aggressiveness of intensive care unit (ICU) patient care. Decisions about Aggressiveness of Patient Care (DAC) measures care providers' general perceptions about decision making. Decisions about Aggressiveness of Patient Care for Specific Patients (DAC[SP]) measures perceptions in specific situations.

DESIGN
Two-phase psychometric instrument evaluation.

SETTING
Phase I, nationally mailed questionnaire. Phase II, northeastern medical center medical ICU.

SUBJECTS
Phase I, 22 ICU nurse and physician experts. Phase II, 35 medical ICU staff nurses and eight medical resident physicians.

OUTCOME MEASURE
Psychometric properties of instruments.

RESULTS
Content validity of both tools was supported by their development from the literature and by the experts. Face validity was supported by the experts, staff nurses, and medical resident physicians. Both instruments had variance in responses, internal consistency reliability (r = 0.53, r = 0.73) and, test-retest reliability (r = 0.73).

CONCLUSION
These instruments may enrich our understanding of how care providers make bioethical decisions for ICU patients. Such understanding could assist with development of interventions to increase collaborative interdisciplinary decision making, leading to increased care provider satisfaction and better patient outcomes.


The advancement of permanently measuring laser scanners has opened up a wide range of new applications, but also led to the need for more advanced approaches on error quantification and correction. Time-dependent and systematic error influences may only become visible in data of quasi-permanent measurements. During a scan experiment in February/March 2020 point clouds were acquired every thirty minutes with a Riegl VZ-2000 laser scanner, and various other sensors (inclination sensors, weather station and GNSS sensors) were used to survey the environment of the laser scanner and the study site. Using this measurement configuration, our aim is to identify apparent displacements in multi-temporal scans due to systematic error influences and to investigate data quality for assessment of geomorphic changes in coastal regions. We analyse scan data collected around two storm events around 09/02/2020 (Ciara) and around 22/02/2020 (Yulia) and derive the impact of heavy storms on the point cloud data through comparison with the collected auxiliary data. To investigate the systematic residuals on data acquired by permanent laser scanning, we extracted several stable flat surfaces from the point cloud data. From a plane fitted through the respective surfaces of each scan, we estimated the mean displacement of each plane with the respective root mean square errors. Inclination sensors, internal and external, recorded pitch and roll values during each scan. We derived a mean inclination per scan (in pitch and roll) and the standard deviation from the mean as a measure of the stability of the laser scanner during each scan. Evaluation of the data recorded by a weather station together with knowledge of the movement behaviour, allows to derive possible causes of displacements and/or noise and correction models. The results are compared to independent measurements from GNSS sensors for validation. For wind speeds of 10 m/s and higher, movements of the scanner considerably increase the noise level in the point cloud data.


Security becomes a very vital part in the development of computer networks, especially in VoIP Communication and Cloud Network. In this final project is implemented Infrastructure As A Service on Cloud Computing system to running a VoIP server and OpenVPN VPN systems, SSTP, and IKEv2 / IPSec as supporting VoIP communications security and Cloud systems. Security aspects will be analyzed VoIP server from DDoS attacks and VoIP communication with sniffing method will then try backing playback RTP packet sent. Included also will be analyzed aspects of performance VoIP communications itself. Scenarios will be done with and without the use of VPN systems. From the test results it can be concluded that the addition of VPN on the server Asterisk-based Cloud Computing will add aspects of integrity, confidentiality, and authentication on VoIP communications, while the results of measurements of quality of VoIP communications obtained lowest quality of QoS is delayt 44 ms, jitter 0.99 ms, packet loss 0% and MOS 4.01. The performance of various VPN systems almost the same and VPN solutions can not only secure communications of VoIP itself but also useful for securing VoIP servers from DoS attacks. Keywords—VoIP; Security; DDoS; VPN; QoS


Can we predict when and where violence will break out within cases of genocide? Given often weak political will to respond, knowing where to strategically prioritize limited resources is valuable information for international decision makers contemplating intervention. I develop a theoretical model to help identify areas vulnerable to violence during genocide. I argue vulnerability is a function of the state's coercive power and the ruling elite's control of this power from above, mediated by the strength of society's cohesion below. Violence will be delayed in areas where political and military resistance to the center is high as it takes time for extremists to exert control at the periphery. Violence will also be delayed in well-integrated communities as it takes time to break existing social bonds and destroy social capital. I draw on the case of Rwanda's 1994 genocide and examine sub-national variation in the onset of violence across the country's 145 administrative communes using survival analysis and within-case analyses comparing early and late onset in two communes. The findings have implications for international policy makers responding to ongoing genocides.


> Papers p 995

Three themes recur in injury prevention: the need to implement fully what is already known, a preference for passive strategies over active ones, and pressure to evaluate new programmes formally. It is unusual for all to be reflected in a single paper, but each is evident in the report by DiGuiseppi et al in this issue (p 995).1 It is also unusual for a report to be as flawless as this one seems to be. The scientific literature is plagued with overworked phrases such as "landmark" and "milestone," yet this study describing the results of a cluster randomised trial of a distribution programme for smoke detectors fully deserves such accolades. To have evaluated a safety programme by using this immaculate design is a huge credit to the investigators and their funding bodies. It is also to the credit of this journal and its reviewers to publish a report whose findings are "negative." Or are they?

For evangelists of injury prevention everywhere the greatest challenge is to implement what has been shown to be efficacious.2 …


Yondelis (trabectedin, ET-743) is a novel antitumor agent derived from a marine source, the Caribbean tunicate Ecteinascidia turbinata. Preclinical studies demonstrated activity at low concentrations against a variety of tumors. The mechanism by which ET-743 exerts its antitumor activity has not been completely elucidated yet. Binding to the minor groove of DNA which causes a bend towards the major groove has been demonstrated. Furthermore, ET-743 interferes with DNA binding proteins and transcription factors. Clinical studies have been initiated as phase I dose-finding studies at four different treatment regimens. Dose-limiting toxicities were hematological, including neutropenia and thrombocytopenia. Furthermore, significant liver toxicity was observed, especially as a rise in transaminase levels. Antitumor activity in phase I and phase II trials was studied in multiple tumor types, including soft tissue sarcomas, melanomas and breast cancer. ET-743 is currently being extensively investigated in advanced soft tissue sarcomas. The present review describes the development of ET-743, highlighting chemical properties, mode of action, metabolism and preclinical and clinical studies. Anti-Cancer Drugs 14:487–502 c 2003 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.


We use antibacterial soap to wash our hands, we swab doorknobs with antibacterial wipes, we pop antibiotics at the first sign of disease - all to avoid infection. But we are all infected. From before birth to after death, infection is what makes humans human. In a startling, chilling, and inspiring narrative, veteran microbiologist, and author Gerald Callahan, explores the world of the microscopic creatures that live on, in, and around us. Did you know that: our overuse of antibiotics is placing us on then cusp of a resurgence of diseases we had thought long conquered? and, many ailments - from schizophrenia and gastric ulcers to obsessive-compulsive disorder - are now being linked to infections? Infection will awaken you to the microscopic brethren that ensure our health as well as take it from us. For better or worse, infection shapes our lives.


We analysed the data of domestic and foreign authors on the relationship between hepatitis C and atherosclerosis. The possible role of the former condition as a risk factor of atherosclerosis even in very young patients is due to the properties of hepatitis C virus, mediators of inflammation, and metabolic disorders.


Notes: (1) These questions require thought, but do not require long answers. Please be as concise as possible. (2) If you have a question about this homework, we encourage you to post your question on our Piazza forum, at https://piazza.com/stanford/fall2015/cs229. (3) If you missed the first lecture or are unfamiliar with the collaboration or honor code policy, please read the policy on Handout #1 (available from the course website) before starting work. (4) For problems that require programming, please include in your submission a printout of your code (with comments) and any figures that you are asked to plot. (5) If you are an on-campus (non-SCPD) student, please print, fill out, and include a copy of the cover sheet (enclosed as the final page of this document), and include the cover sheet as the first page of your submission. SCPD students: If you are submitting on time without using late-days, please submit your assignments through the SCPD office. Consult Piazza post 35 for details. Otherwise, please submit your assignments at as a single PDF file under 20MB in size. If you have trouble submitting online, you can also email your submission to firstname.lastname@example.com. However, we strongly recommend using the website submission method as it will provide confirmation of submission, and also allow us to track and return your graded homework to you more easily. If you are scanning your document by cellphone, please check the Piazza forum for recommended cellphone scanning apps and best practices.


Intrusion detection systems (IDSs) are continuously evolving, with the goal of improving the security of computer infrastructures. However, one of the most significant challenges in this area is the poor detection rate, due to the presence of excessive features in a data set whose class distributions are imbalanced. Despite the relatively long existence and the promising nature of feature selection methods, most of them fail to account for imbalance class distributions, particularly, for intrusion data, leading to poor predictions for minority class samples. In this paper, we propose a new feature selection algorithm to enhance the accuracy of IDS of virtual server environments. Our algorithm assigns weights to subsets of features according to the maximized area under the ROC curve (AUC) margin it induces during the boosting process over the minority and the majority examples. The best subset of features is then selected by a greedy search strategy. The empirical experiments are carried out on multiple intrusion data sets using different commercial virtual appliances and real malwares.


Acidic deposition effects on aboveand belowground wood biomass and nutrient status in a young hardwood forest Brittany Anne Johnson The impact of acid deposition on forest productivity has been studied extensively during the past 30 years. Mixed results abound due to variations in forest age, species composition, land use history, climate, and different experimental procedures. However, most results suggest alterations in productivity and nutrient status as a result of elevated acid deposition. The Long-Term Soil Productivity (LTSP) site in the Fernow Experimental Forest served as the study site; it was initiated with the purpose of observing the impact of forest management and air quality on biomass production and nutrient cycling (Adams et al. 2004). In its entirety, this experiment specifically examines the effect of acidification on aboveand belowground wood productivity as well as the nutrient relations within those pools. Three treatments were replicated in four blocks, in which all naturally regenerated after whole-tree harvesting in 1996. The treatments included a control (WT), ammonium sulfate additions at two times the annual ambient rate (WT+NS), and ammonium sulfate additions (two times ambient) plus dolomitic lime additions that was added at two times the rate of calcium and magnesium export to local stream waters (WT+NS+CA). The liming treatment was implemented to test ameliorative effects on acidified soil conditions. The first study estimated forest productivity, expressed as total aboveground wood biomass and included stem and branch weight of standing live trees, among the three treatments ten years after stand regeneration and treatment initiation. Total aboveground wood biomass was compared among three treatments. Additionally, future stand productivity was estimated for a subsequent 70 years using growth projection simulator SILVAH. Total aboveground wood biomass at ten years was not significantly different among treatments (ANOVA: F = 1.20, p = 0.33, n = 9). Projected aboveground wood biomass estimated the WT+NS+CA treatment may increase 34 percent by forest age 80. The second study involved macroand micronutrient analysis of stem wood tissue from each treatment in five of the most abundant species. These species included yellow-poplar, red maple, sweet birch, black cherry, and pin cherry; northern red oak was also examined. Results suggest altered (though not significantly so) wood concentrations of K, Ca, and Zn in the WT treatment compared to the WT+NS and WT+NS+CA treatments. The data also indicated possible signs of nutrient stress in the WT+NS treatment due to lower wood Ca:Mn and higher N:P nutrient ratios compared to the WT and WT+NS+CA treatment. The third study was carried out to understand the effects of simulated acidic deposition and additions of dolomitic lime on belowground fine root (≤ 2mm) biomass and nutrient levels. Differences in fine root biomass and nutrient content were observed in these plots due to significant block*treatment interactions (ANOVA: F=5.27, p<0.05, n=9). Compared to the WT+NS treatment in block III, fine root nitrogen and phosphorus content was significantly lower in the WT and WT+NS treatments in block II and the WT and WT+NS+CA treatments in block IV.


Quality management (QM) literature highlights that service quality is a critical determinant of organizational competitiveness. The ability of an organization implements service quality program will positively motivate customers' perceive value; this may lead to increased their satisfaction. The nature of this relationship is less emphasized in service quality service models. In this study, a survey research method was used to gather 102 usable questionnaires from academic staffs who have studied in one Malaysian public institution of higher learning in East Malaysia (HIGHINSTITUTION). The outcomes of hierarchical regression analysis showed three important findings: firstly, interaction between perceive value and responsiveness insignificantly correlated with customer satisfaction. Secondly, interaction between perceive value and assurance insignificantly correlated with customer satisfaction and thirdly, interaction between perceive value and emphathy significantly correlated with customer satisfaction. This result demonstrates that perceive value has increased the effect of emphathy on on customer satisfaction, but perceive value has not increased the effect of responsiveness and assurance on customer satisfaction. Further, this study confirms that perceive value does act as a partial moderating variable in the service quality models of the organizational sample. In addition, implications and limitations of this study, as well as directions for future research are discussed.


The present study attempts to apply an efficient yet simple optimization (SOPT) algorithm to optimum design of truss structures under stress and displacement constraints. The computational efficiency of the technique is improved through avoiding unnecessary analyses during the course of optimization using the so-called upper bound strategy (UBS). The efficiency of the UBS integrated SOPT algorithm is evaluated through benchmark sizing optimization problems of truss structures and the numerical results are reported. A comparison of the numerical results attained using the SOPT algorithm with those of modern metaheuristic techniques demonstrates that the employed algorithm is capable of locating promising designs with considerably less computational effort.