Non-puerperal uterine inversion due to uterine sarcoma is a rare entity often diagnosed at the time of surgery. Patients may present with pelvic pain, vaginal discharge, or hemodynamic shock. Clinically, the diagnosis may be suspected if there is a large vaginal mass and difficulty in palpating the cervix. Four surgical procedures have been described to manage non-puerperal uterine inversion, two by the abdominal route and two by the vaginal route. The Haultain procedure performed abdominally is preferred for uterine sarcomas as it facilitates reversion of the uterus vaginally or excision of the pedicle and removal of the prolapsed tumor vaginally. We describe a patient with this condition managed by the Haultain procedure.


Anatomía floral de la planta Psittacanthus schiedeanus (Loranthaceae). Loranthaceae hemiparasitic family comprises 76 genera and about 1 050 species distributed in temperate and tropical regions. The subtribe Psittacanthinae contains 14 genera of neotropical mistletoe including Psittacanthus with over 120 species, characterized by large, brightly colored (red, orange, yellow) flowers that are mostly pollinated by hummingbirds. During the 20th century, a number of morphological and embryological studies were conducted mainly on Old World Loranthaceae genera. More recently, attention has been focused on neotropical Psittacanthinae where among the 14 genera, floral anatomy has been examined in only seven. The aim of this study is to describe the floral anatomy of Psittacanthus schiedeanus and compares the results with those derived from related mistletoe, interpreting the variation of the floral characters of the calyculus, nectary, gynoecium and from floral dissections and serial histological sections, detailing the structure of androecium and gynoecium and anthers in the context of the new phylogenetic information. Flowers of P. schiedeanus at different developmental stages were examined using stained serial sections visualized with light microscopy. These flowers have a vascularized, cupular pedicel fused to a bracteole, a non-vascularized calyculus, an annular nectary, a unilocular gynoecium with a single central mamelon and an androecium formed by epipetalous septate stamens. The morphological comparison of pedicel, bracteole and calyculus provides support for the interpretation of the calyculus as a reduced calyx. The annular nectary seems to be a character shared by the entire subtribe Psittacanthinae, which distinguishes it from Ligarinae which has stylar nectary. The unilocular gynoecium formed by a single central structure is a character shared with other genera in Psittacanthinae except Tripodanthus. The androecium is composed of dithecal, tetrasporangiate stamens with septate locules that are here considered an adaptation for pollen releasing over an extended time period rather than previous suggestions that they result from evolutionary pressure to reduce anther size or to facilitate the nutrition of microspores in large anthers.


This dissertation addresses two different aspects related to food security problems in Indonesia, particularly from the aspect of food accessibility and availability.

The first essay deals with the assessment of undernutrition vulnerability, in which we highlight the importance of assessing the probability of being nutrient deficient in the near future as a complement to the current nutritional status. The empirical investigation is conducted by employing the Just and Pope (1979) method to estimate the vulnerability rate across households. By exploiting the households' socioeconomic characteristics and district specific information, the study finds that income is the most prominent indicator in determining the sufficiency of nutrient intake. Moreover, two micronutrient-related variables are educational background and the health facilities provided in the region. Higher educational background and a greater number of health facilities are correlated with higher micronutrient consumption and lower macronutrient intake. In terms of district-specific variables, the number of clinics and markets play a positive role in decreasing the vulnerability rate to undernutrition. In addition, the probability of being vulnerable to undernutrition is considered as high in the sample with current status of fully nourished. One third from around 46% food secured sample households are found to be vulnerable to under consumption of calorie. While approximately 14% out of 41%. 13% out of 50%, 6% out of 60% households with nourished nutritional status are found to be vulnerable in terms of inadequate intake of protein, calcium, and iron respectively.

The subsequent essay aims at examining the transmission of the international rice price (Thailand and Vietnam price as the reference price) movements to the domestic price. As a big rice imported country, Indonesia is prone to the shock from the international market, given the thin feature of the world rice market. We test whether the error adjust asymmetrically by applying Vector Error Correction Model with ECM being split as well as the threshold effect (Threshold Vector Error Correction Model). The findings reveal that there is low price transmission from international to domestic rice market, with asymmetric adjustment of error. We find the threshold effect only for Indonesia-Thailand price pair.


In the wake of the corporate scandals of the early 2000s, Italian policymakers tackled tunnelling via related party transactions (RPTs) by enacting a three-layer regime: a statute setting the goals of a regulation (transparency, and substantial and procedural fairness of RPTs); a regulation enacted by the financial markets authority (Consob), which defines the "principles" for achieving those goals; and individual companies' internal codes which implement those principles. As a consequence of that approach, Consob was entrusted with two challenging functions: first, to spell out those principles and, second, to enforce the new regime. Consob designed a flexible regulatory framework where, in addition to a set of mandatory provisions, various default ones and some opt-in rules were made available. The core provisions, on the one hand, require immediate disclosure on material transactions to improve market scrutiny, and, on the other, bolster internal governance mechanisms, by granting independent directors veto power on material RPTs. As for Consob's role in enforcement, which is the focus of this chapter, we first describe the formal and informal powers that Consob can use to prevent tunnelling via RPTs and how, in the first years after the RPT Regulation came into force, Consob prioritized such goals both in its strategic plans and its internal organization choices. Then, we report two cases to illustrate how the regulator's timely action, particularly requests for additional disclosure, can encourage companies to adopt better practices and improve RPT terms. At the same time, the analysis of substantial issues (e.g. if the RPT is substantially fair) has made actual enforcement trickier, leading Consob to prefer soft rather than formal powers. Our tale, though, has no happy ending. We show how, after a few years of zealous enforcement of the RPT rules, Consob has become less aggressive in its (somewhat isolated) fight against tunnelling.


The aim of this thesis is to describe the basic syntactic structure of standard Korean in formal terms. The thesis opens with an introduction, Chapter I, to the general background of the Korean language, its alphabet, the dialect chosen for analysis, followed by a discussion of the scope of analysis. In Chapter II, Phonology, a brief summary of the Korean phonological system and a phonetic description of the Korean phonemes are given. Then there follows a discussion of the intonation system and the type of transcription employed in the thesis. This is followed by Chapter III, Word classes, in which six main word classes and their sub-classes necessary for the subsequent syntactic description are set up by formal criteria. Chapter IV, Verb structure, is entirely devoted to a discussion of the internal structure of the verb with special emphasis on inflection, by virtue of which the verb can function at every level in the grammatical hierarchy. In Chapter V, Phrase, three different types of phrase are distinguished and their syntactic functions in other structures, according to which they are distinguished, are described. This is followed by Chapter VI, Clause, where two main clause types are distinguished by syntactic and/or morphological criteria: Final clause and Non-final clause. Final clauses are further divided into six sub-types according to the type of predicate and the elements found in them. On the other hand, non-final clauses are subdivided into (a) Nominal, (b) Adjectival, and (c) Adverbial clauses on the basis of their syntactic functions. The thesis ends with Chapter VIII, Sentence, where Major and Minor sentence types are distinguished according to the presence and absence of a final clause. The Major type sentences are classified into four sentence categories according to the mood suffixes found with the verb and/or the intonation time employed.


This article describes a study of understandings of gender and competence in ICT, among two groups of individuals who use ICT daily at their workplaces. In the study, gender and competence are seen as socially constructed. The main focus is on understandings of gender and competence among the participants in the study, along with social processes which produce, confirm or change those understandings. In the groups studied, competence in ICT was viewed as a question of interest in ICT, where men are more interested in ICT than women. Also, the results can be seen as a confirmation of the view of gender and competence as actively constructed in a social process, in that understandings of the terms were negotiated among individuals in the groups, and were used as norms with which individuals understood themselves and their behaviours. The findings are related to their possible consequences on the construction as well as the use of the Swedish 24/7 agency.


The primary objectives of this study were to describe the characteristics and survival outcomes for children supported with the HeartWare HVAD® system from the global community. This was a retrospective survey of patients <18 years of age with an HVAD® system. Questionnaires were sent to sites worldwide in April 2015 and collected between May 2015 and 2016. Information on 205 patients was collected. The median age at implantation was 13.1 years (interquartile range [IQR] 9.8-15.8 years) and the weight was 42 kg (IQR 28-60 kg). Over half of the implants occurred in males (61%), with the most common diagnosis being cardiomyopathy (n = 168, 82%). The majority of HVAD® systems implanted were left ventricular assist device (n = 189, 92.2%). Temporary right ventricular support was utilized in 24 patients (12%) with a median duration of 12 days (6-32 days). Fifty-five percent (n = 111) of the patients were discharged home after implantation after a median (IQR) duration of hospital stay of 40 days (28-71 days). By 12 months, the proportion of patients who underwent heart transplant was 65.4%, 10.7% had died, 3.2% were explanted for recovery, and 20.8% remained on the device. Death on the device on multivariable analysis was associated with the need for temporary RV support (hazard ratio [HR] 10.65 (95% CI 12.53-44.81), P = 0.001) and pump exchange (HR 7.9 (95% CI 1.8-34.2], P = 0.006). The use of the HeartWare HVAD system in the pediatric population is associated with mortality with the majority of patients supported to heart transplant by 1 year post implant. These positive results are independent of geographic location. The need for a temporary right heart support and pump exchange is associated with a higher risk of poor outcomes, and further work is required to predict these patients to allow for optimization. Although survival results are promising, further studies are needed to delineate the associated morbidities with this technology in the pediatric population.


Background In view of the stimulatory effect of glucose on reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, we investigated the possibility that a mixed meal stimulates ROS generation and possibly induces concomitant proinflammatory changes. Objective The objective was to determine whether the intake of a 900-kcal mixed meal induces an increase in ROS generation by leukocytes and an inflammatory response at the cellular level. Design Nine normal-weight subjects were given a 900-kcal mixed meal, and 8 normal-weight subjects were given 300 mL water after an overnight fast. Blood samples were collected at 0, 1, 2, and 3 h. ROS generation by mononuclear cells and polymorphonuclear leukocytes and the expression of p47(phox) subunit were measured. Intranuclear nuclear factor kappaB (NF-kappaB) binding and the expression of inhibitor kappaBalpha (IkappaBalpha), IkappaB kinase alpha (IKKalpha), and IkappaB kinase beta (IKKbeta) were measured. Plasma concentrations of C-reactive protein (CRP) and soluble intercellular adhesion molecule were also measured. Results ROS generation by mononuclear cells and polymorphonuclear leukocytes and p47(phox) expression increased significantly. The expression of IKKalpha and IKKbeta and DNA-binding activity of NF-kappaB increased significantly, whereas IkappaBalpha expression decreased. Plasma CRP concentrations increased. The intake of 300 mL water did not induce a change in any of the above indexes. Conclusions These data show that the intake of a mixed meal results in significant inflammatory changes characterized by a decrease in IkappaBalpha and an increase in NF-kappaB binding, plasma CRP, and the expression of IKKalpha, IKKbeta, and p47(phox) subunit. These proinflammatory changes are probably relevant to the state of chronic hypertension and obesity and to its association with atherosclerosis.


BACKGROUND
Individuals with Down syndrome (DS) invariably develop Alzheimer's disease (AD) during their life span. It is therefore of importance to study young DS patients when trying to elucidate early events in AD pathogenesis.

AIM
To investigate how levels of different amyloid-beta (Abeta) peptides, as well as tau and phosphorylated tau, in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from children with DS change over time. The first CSF sample was taken at 8 months and the following two samples at 20-40 and 54 months of age.

RESULTS
Individual levels of the Abeta peptides, as well as total Abeta levels in CSF increased over time when measured with Western blot. Tau in CSF decreased whereas there was no change in levels of phosphorylated tau over time.

CONCLUSION
The increasing levels of Abeta in CSF during early childhood of DS patients observed in this study are probably due to the trisomy of the Abeta precursor APP, which leads to an overproduction of Abeta. Despite the increased CSF concentrations of Abeta, there were no signs of an AD-indicating tau pattern in CSF, since the levels of total tau decreased and phosphorylated tau remained unchanged. This observation further strengthens the theory of Abeta pathology preceding tau pathology in AD.


Australia is following in the footsteps of the UK and US and embracing the discourse and regulatory technologies associated with modern slavery regulation. This paper offers a critical perspective on this development. It begins with a brief account of the concept's rise to prominence, and discusses the political economy in which it is embedded. It then explores some of the advantages, as well as the pitfalls, associated with the frame, and its associated regulatory approaches, techniques and discourse. The authors raise three broad sets of concerns. The first goes to the danger of exclusively focusing on criminal justice responses to penalise and deter those who practice modern slavery while neglecting other approaches that may help address the causes of the phenomenon. The second set of concerns goes to the tendency to exaggerate the transformative potential of one of the dominant regulatory responses in this area: the mandatory corporate supply chain reporting provision. The third set of concerns relate to the implications of addressing issues of worker exploitation and mistreatment through a modern slavery and human trafficking approach rather than through other well established and newer regulatory means. To support the third argument, the authors compare the modern slavery approach with two alternate approaches: labour regulation and human rights due diligence. The authors emphasise the need for vigilance to ensure that the embracement of a modern slavery frame does not shift attention (and resources) away from more thorough and effective means of securing greater corporate accountability for labour standards in supply chains.


Circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) can be used to identify gene alterations. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the detection of ctDNA, based on the identification of BRAF and NRAS mutations before systemic treatment initiation, was associated with the prognosis of metastatic melanoma. In total, 68 BRAF or NRAS-mutated stage IV or unresectable stage III metastatic cutaneous melanoma patients were included and tested for the presence of BRAF and NRAS mutations in circulating DNA before treatment initiation, using the Cobas BRAF/NRAS Mutation Test (Roche). The expected mutation was detected in the plasma of 34/68 patients (50% sensitivity). ctDNA detection was associated with AJCC stage, along with the number and nature of metastases. ctDNA was less frequently detected in NRAS-mutated than in BRAF-mutated melanoma (36% and 66%, respectively). At initiation of first-line treatment, ctDNA detection was associated with poor prognosis in Progression Free Survival (PFS) and Overall Survival (OS) in univariate analysis (log-rank: p = 0.002 and p < 0.0001, respectively). In multivariate analysis, ctDNA detection was an independent factor of poor prognosis in OS, after adjustment for AJCC stage, number and nature of metastases and gender (HR = 4.384; 95% CI: (1.308; 14.699); p = 0.017).


Hierarchical ceramics with porosities defined at multiple length scales are of particular interest as catalyst support materials. In fixed‐bed reactors, catalytically active particles or porous pellets are packed in the reactor. A combination of high specific surface area, accessibility to the active sites and mechanical strength is therefore required and yet difficult to achieve. This problem is tackled using the ice templating process. Two approaches are investigated to obtain micromonoliths combining macro‐ and mesoporosities. Ice templating of boehmite suspensions provides materials with macropores ranging from 10 to 26 µm and mesopores from 3.6 to 6.2 nm throughout the entire volume of the sample. Total porosity of the samples ranges from 70 to 98%, and specific surface areas from 170 to 300 m2 g−1 can be reached. The mesopore characteristics can be adapted by modifying the particle size and the freezing rate. However the mechanical properties are not sufficient for application as catalyst carriers. An alternative method based on wash‐coating a mechanically resistant ice templated monolith is described. These monoliths have 64% porosity and straight, continuous, 4.5 µm diameter channels. Uniform 100 to 200 nm thick coatings, with a 360 m g−1 specific surface are deposited without altering the initial mechanical strength of the monolith: 134 ± 30 MPa. We expect such architectures, combining high specific surface area, low pressure drop, and high mechanical strength, to be of special interest as catalyst carriers.


Thi s study investigated inclusive practices in Prince Edward Island (PEI) elemen-tary schools in terms of the supports teachers consider as important for inclusion. Twenty teachers were randomly selected to complete a survey, and 5 teachers were randomly selected to participate in an interview about inclusion supports. The survey in this study adapted The S chool and the Education of All Students Scale. Participants identifie d and ranked several supports that they deemed im-portant for successful inclusion. The r esults indicated that elementary teachers in PEI consider certain supports as important when planning an inclusive class-room, such as class size, curriculum and planning time, training, and other incentives. In light of PEI's continued transition in Special Education services, such results provided insight into specific r ecommendations. The identifie d teach-er supports necessitate acknowledgement and understanding by teachers, parents, school boards, government, and teacher-training programs to ensure inclusive practices are implemented effe ctively in the PEI school system. ISSN 1918-5227 Pages 82- 94 Follow this and additional works at: htt p://ir.lib.uwo.ca/eei


Implementing effective training and education programs is of critical importance for sport management and sport coaching academic education programs. This exploratory research examined the implementation and effectiveness of DISC behavioral profiling in sport management and sport coaching classrooms at the university level. Over four academic years (eight semesters), pre- and post-tests were collected from multiple samples of sport management and sport coaching students (N = 216) at two universities in the United States. Students received a personalized DISC behavioral profile and educational activities were used to enhance the value of the behavioral profiling initiatives. Using pre- and post-activity surveys of the knowledge and skills gained during in-course activities, paired sample t-test showed positive and significant results for 11 of 16 measured areas. The findings suggest that behavioral profiling tools and activities within sport management and sport coaching curricula can enhance student's self-awareness and help develop leadership skills which will prepare for future career opportunities. Limitations and opportunities for future research are also presented.


We consider the problem of minimizing a convex function that is evolving according to unknown and possibly stochastic dynamics, which may depend jointly on time and on the decision variable itself. Such problems abound in the machine learning and signal processing literature, under the names of concept drift, stochastic tracking, and performative prediction. We provide novel non-asymptotic convergence guarantees for stochastic algorithms with iterate averaging, focusing on bounds valid both in expectation and with high probability. The efficiency estimates we obtain clearly decouple the contributions of optimization error, gradient noise, and time drift. Notably, we identify a low drift-to-noise regime in which the tracking efficiency of the proximal stochastic gradient method benefits significantly from a step decay schedule. Numerical experiments illustrate our results.


In this paper, a comprehensive control analysis is presented, with emphasis on regulating the terminal voltage of a photovoltaic generator, interfaced with a current mode controlled buck DC-DC converter, which is, in turn terminated by a battery. The combined generator-convertor-load system possesses nonlinear behaviour, and is subject to environmental conditions, thus causing the control task complicated. Additionally, analyses of small signal equations reveal a possible unstable condition. Hence, a new method of designing a controller for worst-case scenario is presented. Additionally, results of implementing a typical linear controller (PI), which can be designed only in reference to a single nominal operation point, revealing a varied responses. Simulation and results of mathematical analysis are presented to verify the proposed method.


Background: Fragility fractures are increasingly recognized as a complication of type 2 diabetes, with fracture risk that increases with disease duration and poor glycemic control. Yet the identification and management of fracture risk in these patients remains challenging. This review explores the clinical characteristics of bone fragility in adults with diabetes and highlights Methods: A study of 101 type 2 diabetic patients aged 30 years and older was admitted to 175 Military Hospital for treatment from April 2018 to March 2019. Results: Distribution of patients by sex was 45(44.6%) male with average age 65,16±10,57 and 56 (55.5%) female with average age 65,23±10,98. Total average age was 65,2±10,74 (p> 0,05). 36 (15 male and 21 female) patients had age < 60 years and 65 patients (30 male and 35 female) > than 60 years. We found strong correlation between height and weight vs bone density, middle correlation between BMI and bone density and weak correlation between age lumbar spine density. Strong correlation between disease duration and bone density. The correlation equals -0.52 for lumbar spine density and -0.572 for femoral neck density. Conclusion: According to our research, main factors affecting bones in patients with T2DM are female sex, duration of T2DM more than 5 years, uncorrected glucose level and high BMI.


We present a digital watermarking algorithm for 3D model which is based on encrypted holographic digital watermarking algorithm to protect the embedded watermark information (such as a specific identity of the copyright information, etc.) and to improve the security and robustness of the digital watermark information. Firstly, the watermark image is processed by the double random phase modulation to get the hologram watermark which makes a high security. Then in the embedding procedures, affine invariant preprocessing is used for 3D models. We calculate the distance of each vertex to center of gravity of the 3D model which is noted as r, and take it as the watermark embedding element to embed the watermark. The experimental results show that the algorithm had the good performance of the watermark robustness to attacks such as noise addition, model simplification, model cropping, and affine attacks. This algorithm can be widely used for digital copyright protection and other aspects of identity hidden.


BACKGROUND
Apoptosis of tubular and interstitial cells is well documented in kidneys with chronic obstructive uropathy (COU) and probably plays an important role in the pathogenesis of this condition. The molecular control of apoptosis in COU remains poorly understood. Apoptosis in general is known to proceed initially along distinct pathways, which later converge into a common arm characterized by orderly activation of caspases. Caspases are cytosolic enzymes that belong to a 12-member family and serve as effector molecules for apoptosis. The role of individual caspases in mediating renal cell apoptosis in kidneys with COU is studied.

METHODS
Kidneys were harvested from sham-operated mice and mice with COU created by left ureter ligation at days 4, 7, 15, 20, and 30. The following studies were performed: (1) determination of dried kidney weight; (2) in situ end labeling of fragmented DNA to detect apoptotic tubular and interstitial cells; (3) ribonuclease protection assay with specific anti-sense RNA probes for caspases 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, and 12 to detect the expression of individual caspases; (4) immunostaining for caspases; and (5) assay for caspase 3. To assess the role of caspases in COU-associated renal cell apoptosis, the frequencies of apoptotic tubular and interstitial cells were separately quantitated for each experimental time point, and their patterns of variation were correlated with those of individual caspases.

RESULTS
The obstructed kidneys showed progressive tissue loss (60% of control at day 15). Apoptosis of both tubular and interstitial cells was seen in obstructed kidneys. Tubular cell apoptosis peaked at four days after ureter ligation (13-fold of control), remained high between days 4 to 15, and thereafter decreased rapidly. Apoptotic interstitial cells were scanty initially, but gradually increased throughout the entire experiment. Apoptosis was minimal throughout the experiment in control and contralateral kidneys. In control and contralateral kidneys, caspases 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, and 9 mRNAs were expressed at low levels, whereas those for caspases 1, 11, and 12 were not detected. The obstructed kidneys displayed increased expression of all tested caspases. Caspases 1, 11, and 12 mRNAs were detected in obstructed kidneys in a common pattern characterized by a sharp increase at day 4, followed by a decrease until day 20, and a subsequent sharp increase until the end of the study at day 30. A similar pattern was noted for other caspases (2, 3, 6, 7, 8, and 9), which maximally reached twofold to fourfold that of controls. Immunostaining for caspases 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, and 9 showed the same pattern characterized by focal and weak expression in proximal tubules of control or contralateral kidney, contrasting with increased staining in atrophic or dilated tubules of obstructed kidneys. Interstitial cells also displayed staining for several caspases, which paralleled the increasing density of interstitial cells toward the end of the experiment. Caspase-3 assay showed a marked increased activity in obstructed kidneys that reached fourfold and sevenfold of control at days 4 and 30, respectively. The rise and fall of caspase mRNAs between days 4 and 30 paralleled a similar fluctuation in tubular cell apoptosis. The subsequent increase of mRNAs was correlated with a continuous rise of interstitial cell apoptosis.

CONCLUSIONS
Urinary obstruction in mice induces apoptosis of both tubular and interstitial cells in the affected kidney in a distinctive pattern that parallels an increased expression of caspases. This correlation suggests that these caspases mediate COU-associated renal cell apoptosis. Among the evaluated caspases, increased renal caspase 3 activity implies its central role in renal cell apoptosis associated with urinary obstruction.


Mexico is currently undergoing a crisis of violence and insecurity that poses serious threats to democratic transition and rule of law. This is the first book to put these developments in the context of post-revolutionary state-making in Mexico and to show that violence in Mexico is not the result of state failure, but of state-making. While most accounts of politics and the state in recent decades have emphasized processes of transition, institutional conflict resolution, and neo-liberal reform, this volume lays out the increasingly important role of violence and coercion by a range of state and non-state armed actors. Moreover, by going beyond the immediate concerns of contemporary Mexico, this volume pushes us to rethink longterm processes of state-making and recast influential interpretations of the so-called golden years of PRI rule. Violence, Coercion, and State-Making in Twentieth-Century Mexico demonstrates that received wisdom has long prevented the concerted and systematic study of violence and coercion in state-making, not only during the last decades, but throughout the post-revolutionary period. The Mexican state was built much more on violence and coercion than has been acknowledged-until now.


Albright hereditary osteodystrophy (AHO) is a genetic disorder characterized by short stature, skeletal defects, and obesity. Within AHO kindreds, some affected family members have only the somatic features of AHO [pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism (PPHP)], whereas others have these features in association with resistance to multiple hormones that stimulate adenylyl cyclase within their target tissues [pseudohypoparathyroidism type Ia (PHP Ia)]. Affected members of most AHO kindreds (both those with PPHP and those with PHP Ia) have a partial deficiency of Gs alpha, the alpha-subunit of the G protein that couples receptors to adenylyl cyclase stimulation, and in a number of cases heterozygous loss of function mutations within the Gs alpha gene (GNAS1) have been identified. Using PCR with the attachment of a high melting domain (GC-clamp) and temperature gradient gel electrophoresis, two novel heterozygous frameshift mutations within GNAS1 were found in two AHO kindreds. In one kindred all affected members (both PHP Ia and PPHP) had a heterozygous 2-bp deletion in exon 8, whereas in the second kindred a heterozygous 2-bp deletion in exon 4 was identified in all affected members examined. In both cases the frameshift encoded a premature termination codon several codons downstream of the deletion. In the latter kindred affected members were previously shown to have decreased levels of GNAS1 messenger ribonucleic acid expression. These results further underscore the genetic heterogeneity of AHO and provides further evidence that PHP Ia and PPHP are two clinical presentations of a common genetic defect. Serial measurements of thyroid function in members of kindred 1 indicate that TSH resistance progresses with age and becomes more evident after the first year of life.


Since the advent of PowerPoint and course delivery programs like Blackboard, more instructors in higher education are providing students with outlines of their lectures and expecting students to supplement these with their own notes. Although some have found that instructor-provided notes appear to enhance student learning, others suggest that students benefit from the act of taking detailed notes since it engages them in the learning process. While controlling for fidelity of lecture delivery, the present study examined the impact of three conditions on the posttest performance of 154 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in an introductory special education course: (1) no instructor-provided notes were available, (2) instructor-provided notes were available immediately following lectures, and (3) instructor-provided notes were available before lectures. Analyses revealed that pretest scores were significantly correlated to posttest scores and that students who did not receive instructor-provided lecture notes received statistically significant lower posttest scores than students who received instructor-provided lecture notes before or after lectures. The implications for university instruction are discussed.


ABSTRACT Capsule: Current UK distributions of non-native birds poorly match areas identified as being climatically suitable. Aims: Non-native species are spreading at unprecedented rates and though invasions are expected to increase under climate change, evidence for this is mixed. We assess climatic suitability throughout the UK based on the apparent match to the climate in species' native ranges and investigate potential climatic limitation within the non-native range. Methods: Climate was characterized within polygons representing the native ranges of 167 potentially invasive species. Parts of the UK with current and future climate similar to that in the native range were deemed climatically suitable. The incidence of recent observations inside and outside suitable areas was used to test hypotheses about climatic limitation of non-native ranges. Results: Climate matching suggests that 69 of 167 non-native bird species could currently find climatically suitable areas for establishment in the UK. Future climate change would see this number increase by 14% by 2080. However, observed occurrences of non-native species in the UK were not significantly correlated to climatic suitability. Only 44 of the 69 species with suitable climate in the UK were present. Moreover, 85% of species observed in the UK had some UK occurrences in climatically unsuitable areas and for 57 species their entire UK range was in climatically unsuitable areas. Similar results were apparent for the subset of 12 species with established UK populations. Conclusions: Climate matching provides a relatively poor indication of the extent of current and future suitable areas because species can adapt to new climates or other factors constrain the native range and many climatically suitable areas are currently unoccupied. Improvements to climate matching techniques and ongoing surveillance are required to refine predictions to support effective management policies.


Interest in mindfulness and its enhancement has burgeoned in recent years. In this article, we discuss in detail the nature of mindfulness and its relation to other, established theories of attention and awareness in day-to-day life. We then examine theory and evidence for the role of mindfulness in curtailing negative functioning and enhancing positive outcomes in several important life domains, including mental health, physical health, behavioral regulation, and interpersonal relationships. The processes through which mindfulness is theorized to have its beneficial effects are then discussed, along with proposed directions for theoretical development and empirical research.


: The last 20 years has been seen the birth of nephrology in Singapore, starting from a single machine in a side room of a ward to a fully fledged unit with a satellite centre. Renal transplantation and hemodialysis have been accepted as a form of therapy for renal failure in Singapore. The spin off from the creation of dialysis units has been improvement in overall renal care particularly in cases of acute renal failure. It has also generated an atmosphere for research into renal diseases and has helped to promote the image of Singapore as a medical centre par excellence in Southeast Asia.


Recently-developed genotype imputation methods are a powerful tool for detecting untyped genetic variants that affect disease susceptibility in genetic association studies. However, existing imputation methods require individual-level genotype data, whereas in practice it is often the case that only summary data are available. For example this may occur because, for reasons of privacy or politics, only summary data are made available to the research community at large; or because only summary data are collected, as in DNA pooling experiments. In this article, we introduce a new statistical method that can accurately infer the frequencies of untyped genetic variants in these settings, and indeed substantially improve frequency estimates at typed variants in pooling experiments where observations are noisy. Our approach, which predicts each allele frequency using a linear combination of observed frequencies, is statistically straight-forward, and related to a long history of the use of linear methods for estimating missing values (e.g. Kriging). The main statistical novelty is our approach to regularizing the covariance matrix estimates, and the resulting linear predictors, which is based on methods from population genetics. We find that, besides being both fast and flexible - allowing new problems to be tackled that cannot be handled by existing imputation approaches purpose-built for the genetic context - these linear methods are also very accurate. Indeed, imputation accuracy using this approach is similar to that obtained by state-of-the art imputation methods that use individual-level data, but at a fraction of the computational cost.


Carotid stump syndrome is a well-documented embolic source for ischemic stroke. However, few cases have been reported of a similar condition - termed vertebral artery stump syndrome - which affects the posterior circulation after vertebral artery origin occlusion. We herein report a case of infarction of the right superior cerebellar artery and left posterior inferior cerebellar artery territories due to vertebral artery stump syndrome. In this interesting case, a turbulent flow at the distal side of the vertebral artery occlusion was captured on ultrasonography, and was identified as the probable mechanism of vertebral artery stump syndrome.


We demonstrate a new replica molding method for integrating 3D-composite electrodes into microfluidic devices made from polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) at low cost. Our process does not require work in a cleanroom, expensive materials, or expensive equipment once a micro mold has been fabricated using standard multilayer SU-8 photolithography. Different device geometries have been fabricated to demonstrate the capabilities and limitations of the method. The electrical properties of the composite electrode material are characterized. Furthermore, a device for concentrating particles via AC-dielectrophoresis is presented as an example for a potential application of the fabrication process.


The serum precursor SAA of the secondary amyloid protein AA has been detected by solid-phase radioimmunoassay as a normal serum alpha- globulin of mol wt 160,000, which dissociates to a more stable 12,500 dalton moiety on treatment with formic acid. In 12 strains of mice, including T-cell-deficient nude mice, treated with the amyloid-inducing agents lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or casein, SAA behaved as an acute- phase reactant. SAA concentration rose to about 750 mug/ml by 24 h and returned to less than 1 mug/ml by 48 h. Since the amyloid-resistant colchicine-treated mice and AJ mice had a normal SAA response to LPS, it appears that their resistance to amyloid induction is due to the nature of their SAA processing rather than decreased SAA production. C3H/HeJ mice, which have defective B-lymphocyte responses to LPS, required extremely high dosages of LPS to cause SAA elevation, although their SAA response to casein was normal. This suggests that SAA is an acute-phase protein produced as a result of B-lymphocyte stimulation. Preliminary evidence suggests that at the height of an acute SAA response, liver homogenates are particularly rich in protein AA cross- reacting material.


Photography is historically used to display architectural works to distant audience. Digital media, mainly the Internet, have expanded the distribution of images, especially through the websites of architecture offices, which found a handy tool for the dissemination of its portfolio. The perception of the resulting image from the photographic registration technique varies depending on the means it is presented, either digital or analogical. This finding led the investigation presented in this article: How architecture design companies present photographic images to promote their work through electronic portfolios? Is there any strategy that prevails? These questions inspired a research that analyses the architectural photographs digitally presented by Brazilian contemporary architecture offices. The goal is to build a diagnosis of the use of photography on their website by identifying recurrent strategies and techniques. This article presents the examination of photographic images displayed in the Jacobsen Architecture office site, which is relevant in the contemporary Brazilian scene. Procedures consisted of bibliographical and documentary researches, followed by analysis. The literature was addressed to the architectural photography. The documentary research explored all the photographs available on the office's website, totalling 418. It was established 25 objective parameters, which were recognized in each image, and the data were tabulated. The operation of the entire universe of data allowed the statistical and comparative analysis. The result identifies the most common practices and the nature of the photographic image from that office.


The mesopelagic layer is where the majority of the particulate organic carbon exported from the epipelagic layer is remineralized to CO 2 . Recent studies at the DYFAMED time-series station in the NW Mediterranean Sea have shown that dominance of prokaryotes (Bacteria and Archaea) within the microbial community represented by biomass data increases with depth. The studies have also shown that the depth-integrated biomass of protists (heterotrophic flagellates and ciliates) in the mesopelagic layer is as great as that in the epipelagic layer, and that biomass of mesopelagic prokaryotes is controlled by both substrate availability (bottom-up control) and predation and viral infection (top-down control). Data on prokaryotic growth efficiency (derived from the prokaryotic heterotrophic production and the loss of organic carbon flux in the mesopelagic layer on an annual scale) suggest that mesopelagic prokaryotes are not simply remineralizers of organic carbon, but also play an important role in supporting the production of organisms belonging to higher trophic levels. Analysis using a simple food chain model suggests that heterotrophic nanoflagellates may be important remineralizers of organic carbon produced by prokaryotes, and that the viral loop may enhance remineralization of organic carbon in the mesopelagic layer. There are, however, uncertain elements in measuring organic carbon flux and biomass and activity of the microbial components in the mesopelagic layer. By comparing the results obtained at the DYFAMED station with those obtained from other environments, this study summarizes our current knowledge on the structure and function of the mesopelagic microbial loop in the NW Mediterranean Sea as well as in other oceanic regions.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate compliance in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

METHOD
Compliance was assessed through specific interviews.

RESULTS
A total of 73 patients who had concluded the maintenance phase of chemotherapy were enrolled on the study. Eighty-one percent of the interviews were conducted with the patients' mothers; 92% of the families stated that medical instructions had been understood well. Interviews indicated that 27% of the patients did not receive their medication twice or more during the maintenance phase, without medical direction for this. These children were considered non-compliant. Sixteen percent of the children failed to receive their medication three times or more. The main reason for non-compliance was forgetfulness. In ten cases the reported dosage of drugs was not that which was prescribed. No significant associations of non-compliance with parents' schooling level, number of family members or per capita family income were detected. The 8.5-year estimated probability of event free survival was 72.4% (95% CI: 59.2-82.3). The event free survival curves for non-compliant children were not statistically different from those for the compliant group.

CONCLUSIONS
Results suggest that comprehensive approaches to the problem of non-compliance are urgently needed.


Software systems of today are characterized by the increasing size, complexity, distribution and heterogeneity. Understanding and supporting the interaction between software requirements and architectures remains one of the challenging problems in software engineering research. In this paper we present an approach for integration of system requirements and software architectures within the context of the Tropos project, an information system development framework that is requirement-driven in the sense that it adopts concepts used during early requirements analysis. Our framework advocates that a multi agent system corresponds to the organizational structure, in which actors are members of a group in order to perform specific tasks.


Generally, aspheric surfaces require extra high accuracy and roughness and need to be polished further after being shaped. Because the interaction between tool and work-piece in polishing process is compliant, rather than the kind of rigid cutting, the machining quality and machining process are closely allied to the physical properties of the work-piece material. A new three-degree-of-freedom hybrid position/force servo polishing system, which is based on universal CNC Lathe, is developed, and the effect of work-piece materials on the polishing process and processing quality of aspheric surfaces is studied after aspheric parts are compliantly polished in accordance with the Preston removal regulation in this paper.


Banks in non-metropolitan areas compete in a spatially-differentiated environment. This paper estimates a structural model of the supply and demand of banking services in which pricing power depends on the distance between rival banks. A spatial econometric model finds that approximately 38.0% of economic surplus derives from spatial market power.


It has become evident that film has the ability to invoke changes in a society. The social issue of the treatment of the mentally ill has always been the subject of films, although many films of past appear exploitative, sensationalist, crude, and ignorant of the realities of the issues being represented. In 1967, Frederick Wiseman's film, The Titicut Follies, despite winning numerous awards, created such controversy that it became the only film to be banned in the United States for reasons other than obscenity and national security until 1991. The film revealed gross mistreatment of the mentally ill in a state psychiatric facility. This essay posits that the influential and groundbreaking work was a major step not only in filmmaking but in the way filmmaking can reveal and reflect truths, and invoke social change. In a sense, Wiseman changed the paradigm of filmmaking and the documenting of reality. BlickA Game Changer-3


Huntington disease (HD) manifests in both adult and juvenile forms. Mutant HTT gene carriers are thought to undergo normal brain development followed by a degenerative phase, resulting in progressive clinical manifestations. However, recent studies in children and prodromal individuals at risk for HD have raised the possibility of abnormal neurodevelopment. Although key findings in rodent models support this notion, direct evidence in the context of human physiology remains lacking. Using a panel of isogenic HD human embryonic pluripotent stem cells and cerebral organoids, we investigated the impact of mutant HTT on early neurodevelopment. We find that ventricular zone-like neuroepithelial progenitor layer expansion is blunted in an HTT CAG repeat length-dependent manner due to premature neurogenesis in HD cerebral organoids, driven by cell intrinsic processes. Transcriptional profiling and imaging analysis revealed impaired cell cycle regulatory processes, increased G1 length, and increased asymmetric division of apical progenitors, collectively contributing to premature neuronal differentiation. We demonstrate increased activity of the ATM-p53 pathway, an up-stream regulator of cell cycle processes, and show that treatment with ATM antagonists partially rescues the blunted neuroepithelial progenitor expansion in HD organoids. Our findings suggest that CAG repeat length regulates the balance between neural progenitor expansion and differentiation during early neurodevelopment. Our results further support the view that HD, at least in its early-onset forms, may not be a purely neurodegenerative disorder, and that abnormal neurodevelopment may be a component of HD pathophysiology.


Background: Pregnancy loss is one of the most frequent pregnancy complications. It is unclear how recurrent pregnancy loss (RPL) impacts disease risk later in life and if later disease risk is different in women with or without a live birth prior to RPL (primary vs. secondary RPL). We sought to investigate if women have an increased risk of disease following RPL, and if there was a difference between primary and secondary RPL. Methods: Using population-wide health care registry databases from Denmark we identified a cohort of 1,370,896 women between 12 and 40 years in the period January 1, 1977, to October 5, 2016 who had been pregnant. Each woman was followed on average for 15.8 years. Of these, 10,691 (0.77%) women fulfilled the criteria for RPL (50.0% had primary RPL). Relative Risk Ratios (RR) were calculated in a phenome-wide manner for diagnoses with a cumulative incidence proportion [≥]0.1% in women with RPL. Diagnoses related to assessment and diagnosis of RPL and those appearing later in life were separated using a Mixture Model. Results: In the full cohort of pregnant women, 0.77% (10,691) fulfilled the criteria for RPL (50.0% primary RPL). Compared to women without RPL, primary RPL increased the risk of subsequent cardiovascular disorders, including atherosclerosis (RR=2.45, 1.65-3.51 95% Uncertainty Interval (UI)), cerebral infarction (RR=1.87, 1.43-2.4 95% UI), heart failure (RR=1.97, 1.44-2.63 95% UI), and pulmonary embolism (RR=1.82, 1.32-2.46 95% UI). Women with secondary RPL had an increased risk of obstetric complications, e.g. placenta previa (RR=3.76, 2.9-4.8 95% UI), premature rupture of membrane (RR=2.55, 2.21-2.91 95% UI), intrapartum hemorrhage (RR=2.8, 1.77-4.31 95% UI), gestational hypertension (RR=2.2, 1.67-2.87 95% UI), and puerperal sepsis (RR=2.54, 1.8-3.5 95% UI). We also noticed associations to autoimmune, respiratory, gastro-intestinal and mental disorders in both subtypes. Conclusion: Our findings show that RPL is a risk factor for a spectrum of disorders. This can in part be due to increased screening following RPL, but it also suggests that RPL may directly influence or share etiology with a number of diseases later in life. Research into the pathophysiology of both pregnancy loss and later diseases merits further investigation.


Identification of breeding sites remains a critical step in species conservation, particularly in procellariiform seabirds whose threat status is of global concern. We designed and conducted an integrative radiotelemetry approach to uncover the breeding grounds of the critically endangered New Zealand Storm Petrel Fregetta maoriana (NZSP), a species considered extinct before its rediscovery in 2003. Solar-powered automated radio receivers and hand-held telemetry were used to detect the presence of birds on three island groups in the Hauraki Gulf near Auckland, New Zealand. At least 11 NZSP captured and radiotagged at sea were detected at night near Te Hauturu-o-Toi/Little Barrier Island with the detection of an incubating bird leading to the discovery of the first known breeding site for this species. In total, four NZSP breeding burrows were detected under mature forest canopy and three adult NZSP and two NZSP chicks were ringed. Telemetry data indicated NZSP showed strong moonlight avoidance behaviour over the breeding site, had incubation shifts of approximately 5 days and had a breeding season extending from February to June/July, a different season from other Procellariiformes in the region. Radiotelemetry, in combination with rigorously collected field data on species distribution, offers a valuable technique for locating breeding grounds of procellariiform seabirds and gaining insights into breeding biology while minimizing disturbance to sensitive species or damage to fragile habitat. Our study suggests an avenue for other breeding ground searches in one of the most threatened avian Orders, and highlights the general need for information on the location of breeding sites and understanding the breeding biology in data-deficient birds.


In traditional computing, we install software programs on system (computer) update the hardware as per our requirements. Documents we create or save are stored in our computer. Documents are accessible on our own network, but they can't be accessed by computers outside the network. Using of cloud computing, the software programs aren't run from one's personal computer, but are rather stored on servers accessed via the Internet. Cloud Computing provides resources and capabilities of Information Technology (e.g., applications, storages, communication, collaboration, infrastructure) via services offered by CSP (cloud service provider). Cloud Computing has various characteristics as shared infrastructure, self-service, pay-per use model, dynamic and virtualized, elastic and scalable. Cloud computing in academic environment will be benefitted by every student and staff where lots of collaboration and safety of data is needed in academic. Academic has various departments and many semesters where lots of students need to access the computing a need for highly available up-to-date software and hardware is must. Cloud computing has the capacity of scaling and elasticity which is perfect for such an environment.


The article describes the first perceptual quality study of 5.1 surround
sound that has been processed by the Opus codec standardised by the Internet
Engineering Task Force (IETF). All listening sessions with up to five subjects took
place in a slightly sound absorbing laboratory – simulating living room conditions.
For the assessment we conducted a Degradation Category Rating (DCR) listeningopinion
test according to ITU-T P.800 recommendation with stimuli for six channels
at total bitrates between 96 kbit/s and 192 kbit/s as well as hidden references. A
group of 27 naive listeners compared a total of 20 sound samples. The differences
between uncompressed and degraded sound samples were rated on a five-point
degradation category scale resulting in Degradation Mean Opinion Score (DMOS).
The overall results show that the average quality correlates with the bitrates. The
quality diverges for the individual test stimuli depending on the music characteristics.
Under most circumstances, a bitrate of 128 kbit/s is sufficient to achieve acceptable
quality.


In some exceptional cases Elisabeth did her own shopping. At least when it came to material for her dresses she often made her choice in the shop itself. She did not pay for the goods. At least not immediately, since it was customary to make out an annual bill for important customers. However, it seems that society ladies were not always very prompt in settling their accounts: for example, one cloth dealer sued Louise of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha because she owed him some 800,000 krone. An enormous sum, if you bear in mind that a senior civil servant earned 7,200 krone per year and an unskilled industrial worker's annual wages amounted to some 800 krone. The poorer sections of the population did not always pay immediately either, but had the amount 'chalked up'. Unlike the upper echelons it was not, however, a matter of expensive gowns but above all of groceries, for which the weekly wage not always adequate. When payments were made, it was in gulden or krone, with coins or in banknotes. In the years before the First World War there were two currency reforms: in 1857 from gulden in the socalled 'convention coin' ( Conventionsmunze ) to gulden, and in 1892 from gulden to krone. Paper money, which had been in use since around the middle of the eighteenth century, had – at least theoretically – to be covered by an equivalent amount in silver coin. This obligation to redeem paper money was abolished when gulden banknotes were introduced in the reform of 1857.


BACKGROUND
The screening of baggage using X-ray scanners is now routine in aviation security with automatic threat detection approaches, based on 3D X-ray computed tomography (CT) images, known as Automatic Threat Recognition (ATR) within the aviation security industry. These current strategies use pre-defined threat material signatures in contrast to adaptability towards new and emerging threat signatures. To address this issue, the concept of adaptive automatic threat recognition (AATR) was proposed in previous work.

OBJECTIVE
In this paper, we present a solution to AATR based on such X-ray CT baggage scan imagery. This aims to address the issues of rapidly evolving threat signatures within the screening requirements. Ideally, the detection algorithms deployed within the security scanners should be readily adaptable to different situations with varying requirements of threat characteristics (e.g., threat material, physical properties of objects).

METHODS
We tackle this issue using a novel adaptive machine learning methodology with our solution consisting of a multi-scale 3D CT image segmentation algorithm, a multi-class support vector machine (SVM) classifier for object material recognition and a strategy to enable the adaptability of our approach. Experiments are conducted on both open and sequestered 3D CT baggage image datasets specifically collected for the AATR study.

RESULTS
Our proposed approach performs well on both recognition and adaptation. Overall our approach can achieve the probability of detection around 90% with a probability of false alarm below 20%.

CONCLUSIONS
Our AATR shows the capabilities of adapting to varying types of materials, even the unknown materials which are not available in the training data, adapting to varying required probability of detection and adapting to varying scales of the threat object.


In times of increasing pressures on water resources, the integrated management of the resource is a central policy objective. While there exists encompassing research about the concept of integrated water resources management (IWRM), much remains to be studied regarding the integration of water-related policies. Water resources management profits when policy actors coordinate their demands and actions across policy sectors, territorial entities, and decision-making levels within a water basin. However, actors are bound by the policy framework, which organizes water resources management in defined sectors and, over time, develop into independent and specialized policy pillars. A growing number of policies increases the need to integrate those policies over time following the institutional resources regime (IRR) framework. However, an increasing number of policies also proves challenging in establishing an integrated, coherent regime compliant with IWRM. In this study, we analyze flood risk management policies and find an almost exponential increase in policies over time, while flood risks and damage have not decreased in parallel. We address this empirical puzzle with an in-depth analysis of the design of Swiss flood risk management policies over time. To this end, we survey the opinion of 146 flood experts on the importance of ten policy design indicators in three flood-prone regions in Switzerland. Flood risk management experts attribute particular importance to policy designs characterized by integration, a sufficient budget for policy implementation, and coercive instruments and sanctions. We then compare survey results to the ways in which Swiss policies have been designed in legislation across policy sectors related to flood risk management over the last 169 years. We find that policy designs follow a national policy style. Placing these results in local contexts, we explain why the design of policies represents both a challenge and opportunity for policy-makers involved in flood risk management.


Ti-47Al-2Cr-2Nb-Y alloy pancake were produced by hot-pack forging. The microstructure of as-forged Ti-47Al-2Cr-2Nb-Y alloy were investigated by optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy, showing that the forged alloy was composed of fine γ grains and retain cast lamella colonies surrounded by elongated B2 phase. Tensile properties of the material showed that yield strength (YS) and ultimate tensile strength (UTS) were decreased from 500MPa and 612MPa at room temperature to 420 MPa and 462 MPa at 800°C, respectively. With the temperature increasing to 900°C, elongation reached 120%.


Ordovician palaeomagnetic data from the upper reaches of the Lena River, Southern Siberia, confirm and refine the earlier reported data sets. Ordovician palaeomagnetic poles from Siberia define a systematic southwesterly apparent polar wander (APW) trend during Ordovician times (mean south poles: 500 Ma: 42°N, 310°E; 467 Ma: 27°N, 314°E; 460 Ma: 23°N, 313°E; 448 Ma: 22°N, 301°E and 437 Ma: 0N, 290°E). A primary or early magnetization age is verified by the reversal stratigraphy. Siberia was geographically inverted at low southerly latitudes during the Latest Cambrian and Early Ordovician and drifted slowly northward and across the equator at an average palaeo-latitudinal velocity of c. 5cm/year. In Early Ordovician times, Avalonia and the European Massifs (e.g. Armorica and Bohemia) were located together with Gondwana in high southerly latitudes, Laurentia was positioned in equatorial latitudes whereas Baltica was located at intermediate southerly latitudes. Siberia was probably located north of Baltica in latest Cambrian–Early Ordovician times. Subduction-related, eclogite-facies metamorphism in latest Cambrian–Early Ordovician time in the Scandinavian Caledonides occurred in an ocean-continent transition zone marginal to Baltica but facing northern Siberia, and thus throws doubt on traditional Baltic-Laurentian correlations during this particular time period. With Baltica rotating counterclockwise during the Ordovician, the plate scenario allows for a Siberian source for Late Ordovician sedimentation in some areas of maritime Laurentia and perhaps even northern Norway. It also helps to explain the imposition of a deep-seated, sinistral strike-slip, fault regime between the obliquely converging Baltica and Laurentia, a transcurrent system which may have led to the permissive ascent of calc-alkaline granitoid magmas in favourable sites prior to the main stages of Scandinavian orogenic deformation. Recent proposals that Laurentia formed a conjugate margin to the South American part of Gondwana during Ordovician times are permissible from palaeomagnetic data, but a tight continental fit during the entire Ordovician is contradicted by biogeographic data. The tight palaeomagnetic fit could perhaps be an artefact of inaccuracies in the palaeomagnetic record for Gondwana.


A place is both real and imagined, but also symbolic. Global positioning System (GPS) devices tell us where we are on the surface of the earth in terms of latitude, longitude and altitude but they cannot tell us about a cultural sense of place. Hamilton and Southern worked with local people to make a new map of Lancaster and Morecambe, UK, based on the lives of the people living and working there, and of the places. The walkers were invited to make journeys that in some way represent who they are in conjunction with being a landmark for the city they live in (e.g. A participant in Morecambe took us for a walk along the seafront, as for him the seafront represented Morecambe, and it was a route he regularly took when walking his dog). Thirty four walks were recorded using a GPS device, and were represented together in the gallery on two map like screens folded into the space.

Behind the scenes you see the chaotic trails of 34 walks begin to make a co-herent geography, the busy centre of Lancaster, the sprawling sinuous wave of the seafront in Morecambe. Although the back of the screens are expressing a lived and personal experience they are also the most 'map like'. The fronts of the screens, whilst more abstract are also more evocative of an experience of place. The sweeps of matchsticks appearing to flock, to group like isobars, to flow like tides.


Health is a notion that is expressed everywhere we go. Terms like healthy eating, health care, mental health, healthy living, healthy cities, healthy economy, healthy relationships, and so on have become common-place but what do these phrases mean for us as a society, what systems do they enact and perhaps most poignantly does this obsession with health actually make us more healthy? The English origin of the word 'health' referred predominantly to 'wholeness' of a complete body, or a matter that is unspoiled. The broadening of the term 'health' in Middle English brings us closer to the contemporary definition in which it can be considered to mean prosperity, happiness, welfare, preservation and safety. Today, healthiness can be seen as a state of mind, a goal or objective, a framework, a label (something to be approved by), a confirmation for individuals or a community, or even systems.

Technology has played a role in this new obsession with health. Body health, for example, has become a focus of self-monitoring technology through wearable tech. Food is now shared online, separated into categories, divided into calories and measured through apps and other online services. Economies (micro and macro) are constantly available as our banking moves to our phone and travel is automatically transferred to our credit cards, mapping out our offline journeys, actions and transactions as well as our online ones. The level of detail we can obtain about every aspect of our lives is now immense; we can monitor it and look for any inconsistencies that could make either us, or our lives less healthy – but how does this anxiety of always being on the lookout for inconsistency affect us? Does the segregation of the human being, pulled into a range of parts or collections of data push again the notion of the posthuman? And does design have a role to play in considering the way health and data may be constructed as a deeper self-reflection rather than anxiety-driven monitoring? We posit that in contemporary society we are not 'being' healthy, we are buying healthy, consuming healthy, printing healthy, travelling healthy and displaying other acts of healthiness.

Within this paper, we seek new ways to unravel this collective obsession with 'being healthy' and question fears and norms attached to the formation of this notion. By considering the work of Gilbert Simondon, Bruno Latour, Gilles Deleuze and Katherine Hayles we begin to see health as a complex system of interwoven factors, which can never achieve full wholeness.


The 1998 New South Wales Pay Equity Inquiry demonstrates some limitations of dominant theoretical approaches to the undervaluation of work in female-dominated occupations and industries. Campaigns for equal pay could be enriched with a firmer understanding of the complexity of caring and emotional labour in women's paid human service occupations such as nursing, hairdressing and childcare. Such understandings can help redefine skill and worth so as more thoroughly to recognise and reward interpersonal work performed in female-dominated service occupations. Rejecting common moral and economic objections to placing monetary values on these traditionally feminine and ostensibly 'non-economic's activities is another ingredient for the historic achievement of gender pay equity.


This paper explores the attitudes of members of three moshavim located in different parts of Israel regarding the reasons for the weakening of the cooperation within their cooperative association and settlement. Major reasons include government policy and the inability of the moshav cooperative association to enforce the rules of cooperation. Major internal causes are concerned with conflicting interests of different moshav members due to economic changes, including changes in specific agricultural branches, and issues concerning loans given to farmers. Reasons such as production quotas, employment patterns, and education do not significantly contribute to the weakening process, though there are differences in the importance of these reasons between the three moshavim. Some differences in attitudes were found on the basis of age, education level, and type of agricultural branches. The overall transformation in the economic, social, organizational, physical, and environmental attributes of the moshav raises a major question regarding its future survival as a unique type of rural cooperative settlement.


In this innovative yet down-to-earth book, Roy Strong demonstrates that looking at garden styles of the past offers no just ways to restore or re-create garden styles of a particular period, but also an exciting treasure trove of ideas for small gardens today. Gardening through the Ages will enable anyone to make a garden entirely in keeping with the style and architecture of their home, whether it is a Georgian terraced house, a Victorian cottage or a 1920s suburban villa. But, just as some of the most interesting interiors are an eclectic fusion of styles, so Roy Strong presents hundreds of seductive and unusual ideas which can be mixed, adapted and used in any garden. As well as an abundance of photographs of existing gardens in twenty different historical styles, conceived with his unerring eye for period effects,and brought to life with stunning three-dimensional illustrations.


Abstract Background Exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) of infants in their first 6 months postpartum is beneficial. However, maternal employment and short maternity leave impede EBF practice. In 2011, Brunei implemented a new Maternity Leave Regulation to extend paid maternity leave. Objectives To compare the prevalence of EBF between employed and nonworking mothers in Brunei, before and after extending paid maternity leave, to determine its effect on EBF and to determine the effects of maternal and infant sociodemographic characteristics. Methods Cross-sectional review of feeding records for infants born in 2010 (n = 6412, 85.5% all live births) and 2013 (n = 6680, 85.7%). Results EBF prevalence at 6 months postpartum increased from 29% in 2010 to 41% in 2013. EBF prevalence was higher among multiparous mothers (P < 0.001), mothers of Malay ethnicity (P < 0.05), and mothers of girls (P < 0.01 only in 2013) in both years. EBF prevalence among government-employed mothers (81.0%, 67.7%, and 57.8%) was greater than it was among nonworking mothers (79.1%, 66.3%, and 56.9%) by 1.9, 1.4, and 0.9 percentage points, respectively, during the first 3 months of active paid maternity leave in 2013. Mothers employed in the government and private sectors showed greater increases in the practice of EBF (15.5 and 10.8 percentage points respectively) than nonworking mothers (8.8 percentage points) from 2010 to 2013. Conclusions EBF prevalence increased after extending paid maternity leave, with the greatest increases seen among employed mothers. Maternal ethnicity, parity, and the sex of the infant were also correlated with EBF.


The quest for feature- and family-oriented deductive verification of software product lines resulted in several proposals. In this paper we look at delta-oriented modeling of product lines and combine two new ideas: first, we extend Hähnle & Schaefer's delta-oriented version of Liskov's substitution principle for behavioral subtyping to work also for overridden behavior in benign cases. For this to succeed, programs need to be in a certain normal form. The required normal form turns out to be achievable in many cases by a set of program transformations, whose correctness is ensured by the recent technique of abstract execution. This is a generalization of symbolic execution that permits reasoning about abstract code elements. It is needed, because code deltas contain partially unknown code contexts in terms of "original" calls. Second, we devise a modular verification procedure for deltas based on abstract execution, representing deltas as abstract programs calling into unknown contexts. The result is a "delta-based" verification approach, where each modification of a method in a code delta is verified in isolation, but which overcomes the strict limitations of behavioral subtyping and works for many practical programs. The latter claim is substantiated with case studies and benchmarks.


It is well recognised that physical illness is associated with an increased risk of experiencing psychological problems and disorder and that there is considerable variation in the nature and severity of psychological reaction. This variance is not explained by physical disease characteristics alone. The meaning that is ascribed by patients to physical illness experiences has been examined as a potential explanatory variable. However the term 'meaning' has been used inconsistently and has been subject to semantic confusion within the literature. The term has been used to refer to discrete interpretations, the process of making sense of the occurrence of traumatic personal events and the outcome of this process of 'search for meaning'. Meaning can also be distinguished in term of whether it is focused on cross- situational and global themes (e.g. 'The world is unjust, cruel and unfair') from a focus on interactions between an individual and situation specific events, so called situational meaning (e.g. 'I blame myself for having cancer'). Cancer is known to be associated with a number of specific psychological challenges many of which have informed research in psychosocial oncology. Global and situational meaning have been examined across a range of clinical populations. The existence of a range of valid and reliable assessment measures of global meaning has contributed to this literature. Although studies are beginning to examine global meaning in cancer, further development in understanding situational meaning in cancer has been hampered by the lack of any validated measure for this purpose.


The use of 3D visualisation has long been established as a major breakthrough in closing the gap between a client's need and what is perceived by the designer to be the need of the client. Nevertheless, construction clients are increasingly demanding a greater participation in the process of design generation. This has been a welcome move by all parties, as less variation means less conflict. In spite of its vast practical uses, in the field of visualisation, the ability to travel through time is an area that has been neglected by the academics and the developers alike. The paper highlights the benefits of the incorporation of the 4/sup th/ dimension-the time dimension-into 3D visualisation. Building maintenance is used as a case study to demonstrate the practicality of the 4D visualisation and its representation through VRML. To this end, the focus is on the lighting, paints and carpets. However, the concept can easily be expanded to encompass the causes and effects of all events on all building components.


Recent work has indicated that linear vibrational energy harvesters with an appended degree-of-freedom (DOF) may be advantageous for introducing new dynamic forms to extend the operational bandwidth. Given the additional interest in bistable harvester designs, which exhibit a propitious snap through effect from one stable state to the other, it is a logical extension to explore the influence of an added DOF to a bistable system. However, bistable snap through is not a resonant phenomenon, which tempers the presumption that the dynamics induced by an additional DOF on bistable designs would inherently be beneficial as for linear systems. This paper presents two analytical formulations to assess the fundamental and superharmonic steady-state dynamics of an excited bistable energy harvester to which is attached an auxiliary linear oscillator. From an energy harvesting perspective, the model predicts that the additional linear DOF uniformly amplifies the bistable harvester response magnitude and generated power for excitation frequencies less than the attachment's resonance while improved power density spans a bandwidth below this frequency. Analyses predict bandwidths having co-existent responses composed of a unique proportion of fundamental and superharmonic dynamics. Experiments validate key analytical predictions and observe the ability for the coupled system to develop an advantageous multi-harmonic interwell response when the initial conditions are insufficient for continuous high-energy orbit at the excitation frequency. Overall, the addition of an auxiliary linear oscillator to a bistable harvester is found to be an effective means of enhancing the energy harvesting performance and robustness.


Miles and Snow, among others, argue that strategy content is an important influence on organizational performance. Their typology, applied recently to public organizations in the United Kingdom, divides strategic actors into four general types: prospectors, defenders, analyzers, and reactors. This article begins by integrating work on strategy content or strategic management into the O'Toole-Meier formal theory of public management. This study shows that strategy content is a subset of generally accepted management functions in public organizations. The article then proceeds to test the strategic management concepts in a large, multiyear sample of public organizations. The results show that strategy can be separated out from other elements of management for a distinguishable assessment of its impact on organizational performance. Unlike the predictions of Miles and Snow and the empirical findings of Boyne and Walker, however, we find that the defender strategy is the most effective for the primary mission of the organization and that the prospector and reactor strategies work best in regard to the goals of the more politically powerful elements of the organization's environment.


Many recent works have demonstrated the benefits of knowledge graph embeddings in completing monolingual knowledge graphs. Inasmuch as related knowledge bases are built in several different languages, achieving cross-lingual knowledge alignment will help people in constructing a coherent knowledge base, and assist machines in dealing with different expressions of entity relationships across diverse human languages. Unfortunately, achieving this highly desirable cross-lingual alignment by human labor is very costly and error-prone. Thus, we propose MTransE, a translation-based model for multilingual knowledge graph embeddings, to provide a simple and automated solution. By encoding entities and relations of each language in a separated embedding space, MTransE provides transitions for each embedding vector to its cross-lingual counterparts in other spaces, while preserving the functionalities of monolingual embeddings. We deploy three different techniques to represent cross-lingual transitions, namely axis calibration, translation vectors, and linear transformations, and derive five variants for MTransE using different loss functions. Our models can be trained on partially aligned graphs, where just a small portion of triples are aligned with their cross-lingual counterparts. The experiments on cross-lingual entity matching and triple-wise alignment verification show promising results, with some variants consistently outperforming others on different tasks. We also explore how MTransE preserves the key properties of its monolingual counterpart.


Intrusion detection systems (IDS) designed for conventional computer systems and networks are not necessarily suitable for mobile cyber-physical systems (CPS), such as robots, drones and automobiles. They tend to be geared towards attacks of different nature and do not take into account mobility, energy consumption and other physical aspects that are vital to a mobile cyber-physical system. This work provides two different approaches for addressing the problem of detecting attacks against vehicles, using a small-scale robotic vehicle as a testbed. The first approach is based on decision trees and the second on deep learning. Both use a combination of cyber and physical features that can be measured by its onboard systems and processes. Experimental evaluation on a variety of scenarios involving denial of service, command injection and two different types of malware infections demonstrated the feasibility of the approaches. Decision tree algorithm is one of the most lightweight machine learning techniques, yet sufficiently powerful in many areas of applications, because it can naturally account for non-linearities in the data. Decision trees produce sets of simple rules, which can be easily checked onboard even the most resource-constrained of robotic vehicles. In the case of our vehicle, this approach was able to achieve high accuracy rate for denial of service attacks, but less so for the other attacks tested. Due to their processing resource constraints, cyber-physical systems, such as robotic vehicles, tend to be limited to lightweight mechanisms, such as decision trees and other statistical machine learning techniques. We show that considerably higher accuracy rates can be achieved if one utilises techniques from the field of deep learning. In particular, we use a recurrent neural network architecture, benefiting from a long short-term memory layer, which is highly appropriate for real-time data. To address the processing limitations, we turn to computational offloading, which is a technique particularly common for mobile devices, for largely the same reasons: to save energy and to have access to greater processing resources. We show both experimentally and mathematically in which cases offloading the periodic task of deep learning based intrusion detection to a remote server can be practical, especially in relation to the time the whole process takes.


The stratigraphy and development of the Elbingerode Reef Complex (Harz Mountains) are presented in the light of conodont investigations. The Elbingerode Reef Cotmplex, which developed on an isolated submarine volcanic rise within the Rhenish Trough, displays an atoll-like structure of facies pattern. Correlations based upon canodonts indicate the onset of reef growth in the MiddIe varcus Zone and is diachronous termination up to the Upper gigas Zone. The younger, posit-reef sediments ranging up to the anchoralis-latus Zone are recognized as the neptunian dykes and the pockets within the reef carbonates. The termination of reef formation in the Elbingerode Reel Complex is interpreted as result of the increasing subsidence of the sea floor. The conodont distribution within the reef carbonates is restricted to the fore-reef facies, but no clear depth segregation of conodonts is observed. Differentiation of CAI values within the Elbingerode Reef Complex is also discussed.


Moxalactam, a novel beta-lactam antimicrobial agent in which oxygen has replaced sulfur in the six-membered ring of the conventional cephem nucleus, has in vitro activity against almost all commonly isolated bacterial pathogens including Staphylococcus aureus, the Enterobacteriaceae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Bacteroides fragilis, and Haemophilus influenzae. The clinical efficacy an toxicity of moxalactam alone was evaluated in the treatment of 100 infections, including 22 septicemias. Thirty-two infections involved P aeruginosa, while organisms resistant to one or more of the currently available cephalosporins or cefoxitin were isolated from cultures in 63 of the cases. The overall clinical response was favorable (infection cured or improved) in 86% of the infections. A child with Klebsiella pneumoniae ventriculitis and meningitis was cured with intravenous moxalactam alone. Six of 14 treatment failures involved P. aeruginosa, and P aeruginosa isolates resistant to moxalactam emerged during therapy of 12 infections. Side effects, usually mild diarrhea, occurred in only 8.8% of the patients. Except for some severe P aeruginosa infections outside the urinary tract, moxalactam is effective and safe single-agent therapy for infections caused by susceptible organisms and represents a major advancement in beta-lactam antimicrobial therapy.


In 1997 it will be thirty years since the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 made sex between two men aged over 21 in private no longer a crime. It also marks the seventieth birthday of Antony Grey, who was one of the leading campaigners for homosexual law reform in the 1960s. The articles and talks reprinted in this book (together with others published here for the first time) cover the whole span of Grey's campaigning life, ranging from his first, anonymous, letter to the press about homosexuality written in 1954 to his thoughts on present-day sexual politics in the 1990s. Topics covered include law reform, religious and social attitudes to homosexuality, sex education, young people and sex, and the gay movement. The book concludes with a newly-written essay reviewing the progress achieved since the middle of this century and assessing what remains to be done as we enter the coming one. Never afraid of controversy, Antony Grey provides a unique summary of a pioneering campaigner's forty years of gay activism. For over 40 years, Antony Grey has been a leading campaigner, not only for gay rights, but also for better laws about, and more sensible attitudes towards, sex generally. As Secretary of the Homosexual Law Reform Society during the 1960s, Director of the Albany Trust in the 1970s, and later as a freelance writer and counsellor, he has worked publicly and consistently for individual sexual emancipation and collective common sense. Discussion includes law and morality, pornogaphy and free speech, the Church and homosexuality, young people and definitions of consent, sex education, gay politics from the homophile movement to queer, and outing.


This is a scholarly treatise about a roentgenographic method that has not achieved wide use, despite a long history. With the current active interest in "noninvasive" cardiac diagnostic techniques, this procedure might have fallen into a place of great importance, but has not. My goal, in addition to assessing the book, was to try and understand why this might be. The discussion begins with a survey of the history of roentgenkymography. This is followed by a description of the method. As a forerunner of motion recording techniques in roentgenography, the method provides a picture of x-ray dense shadows over two or three cardiac cycles, with moving borders presenting a serrated appearance on the film. The depth of the serrations indicates the extent of motion, if the border is oriented perpendicular to the direction of travel of the x-ray grid. The text is largely dedicated to areas of interest to the


Aim/Purpose: This study focuses on the learners' success toward learning management systems in higher education in Morocco and also proposes a theoretical model to better understand the determinants of learners' satisfaction, self-regulation and continuance intention to use these systems. For this purpose, variables which may have a positive or negative influence in our model are examined.

Background: The latest version of the technology acceptance model, expectation–confirmation model, DeLone and McLean Information systems success model and self-regulated learning theory, have been used. This study proposes a causal model named e-learner success assessment model or e-LSAM.

Methodology: In this study, a structural equation model (SEM) approach was used for the empirical validation and testing of correlation hypotheses between e-LSAM constructions.

Contribution: This research extends previous literature on the factors that can contribute to learners' use, engagement, satisfaction and success in an e-learning system, we also propose a causal model named e-learner success assessment model (e-LSAM).

Findings: The results indicate that, learner's success in an e-learning system could be explained by self-regulation and learners' intention to continue using LMS, which is explained by learners' satisfaction. The results also show that the system quality, course and information quality, course flexibility, diversity in assessments and social interactions can improve learners' satisfaction with LMS platforms

Impact on Society: This study will enable the university and higher school in Morocco to better understand the critical factors to be undertaken to improve student performance and educational levels.

Future Research: This document is a general overview of factors that help to understand learner's success in an eLearning system; it is not without limitations. Our research did not take into account the effects of demographic attributes such as gender, age, level of education and others. More specifically, Morocco, like any other country, has its own traditions and culture, future research should explore how these aspects influence the success of learners in an e-learning system.


The study was undertaken to assess cardiac performance with phasic left ventricular (LV) volume as an additional variable. Since little is known about this variable, an isolated heart was chosen as experimental preparation. Hearts of mongrel dogs were used in which the circulations through right and left heart were separated; also the entire coronary system was perfused isolated from the aortic pressure. Thus, LV performance may be studied in a preparation in which many parameters can be controlled independently: filling- and arterial pressures, coronary bloodflow and oxygen delivery rate, and frequency. LV volume is obtained by making the LV blood slightly ferromagnetic by dilution with a ferromagnetic fluid. The LV contents thereby act as a varying size 'core' of an induction coil placed around the heart. A homogeneous magnetic field induces a voltage in the coil linearly proportional to instantaneous LV volume. The continuous volume registration exhibits the typical characteristics of isovolumic periods, ejection- and filling phases, and atrial contribution to filling. In a previous study using the method in situ the authors showed the accuracy of the measurement to be better than 93%. Since the method is independent of geometry it may, in principle, be used for the right ventricle as well. The authors conclude that both the volume method and the preparation used are ideally suited to expand the study of cardiac performance.


From 1995 to 1998 the natural electric field was monitored with an array of 20 dipoles on a ridge separating two reservoir lakes in the French Alps. The experiment was run to study the correlation between the electric potential variations and transient deformations of the ridge in association with the annual cycle of lake level variations. Large distortion of the induced electric field is observed and is found almost purely static and well correlated to the geology. A simple DC 3‐D model is constructed, and resistivity structures that create the distortion are identified. The electrically resistive crystalline bedrock strongly amplifies the static distortion caused by the heterogeneous geology on the ridge. The temporal variations of the electric distortion observed over two years are associated with the lake level cycle. The model suggests that a resistivity variation of the order of 20% in the bedrock can account for the observed seasonal time‐varying distortion. The resistivity change could be explained in terms of pore and crack geometry change controlled by stress. This study suggests that in particular geological contexts, electrical resistivity changes in structures can be detected through an amplification of the static distortion of the induced electric field. The results provide a framework to interpret some observations of electric field variations possibly associated with tectonic activity. The galvanic coupling model proposed here is an alternative to the streaming potential effect model, and it defines new criteria for the surface detection of groundwater in the crust.


Cognitive abilities refer to brain based skills that are required to carry out any task ranging from the simplest to the most complex. Since these skills play a significant role in our day to day activities, efforts are being made by researchers for their further enhancement. The objective of the present study was to investigate if these abilities can be enhanced through a training module on critical thinking. Critical thinking involves something more than cognitive skills. Critical thinking is not static but a constantly evolving process and even more crucial in a military environment. This study consists of certain activities which are designed in such a manner that the solution of it can be generated through critical thinking. These activities were administered on 36 participants (20 male, 16 female). Each Participant's baseline cognitive performance was assessed after which training was given to them in the form of different critical thinking activities followed by post assessment of cognitive abilities. Paired sample t - test was used which showed that There was a significant difference in the cognitive performance post critical thinking activities.


Abstract An intriguing umpolung of the reactivity of imines possessing electron-withdrawing groups was observed. For example, N-alkylation-coupling reaction of the imines derived from glyoxylates was conducted with dialkylaluminum chloride in acetonitrile to give N-monoalkylated 1,2-diamines in good yields. On treatment of various α-imino esters with organoaluminum reagents and allyltributyltin in the presence of benzoyl peroxide (BPO), the tandem reaction proceeded to give the N-alkylation/C-allylation products in good yields. Diethyl 2-[N-(p-methoxyphenyl)imino]-malonate underwent amination reactions with alkyl Grignard reagents to give N-alkylation products in good yields. The obtained N-alkylation products were readily converted into N-alkyl-p-anisidines by the oxidative removal of the malonate moiety. In order to enhance the reactivity of imines, an iminium salt was prepared using the oxidation of amino ketene silyl acetal with 2,3-dichloro-5,6-dicyano-1,4-benzoquinone (DDQ), and the subsequent nucleophilic addition to this iminium species proceeded to afford α-amino esters in good yields.


In this paper we investigate the use of phase-change memory (PCM) devices as binary probabilistic synapses in a neuromorphic computing system for complex visual pattern extraction. Different PCM programming schemes for architectures with- or without-selector devices are provided. The functionality of the system is tested through large-scale neural network simulations. The system-level simulations show that such a system can solve a complex real-life video processing problem (vehicle counting) with high recognition rate (>94%) and low power consumption. The impact of the resistance window on the power consumption of the system is also studied. Results show that the learning-mode power consumption can be dramatically reduced if the RESET state of the PCM devices is tuned to a relatively low resistance. Read-mode power consumption, on the other hand, can be minimized by increasing the resistance values for both SET and RESET states of the PCM devices.