The sciatic nerve is the thickest nerve in the body. It leaves the pelvis via the greater sciatic foramen below piriformis and descends between the greater trochanter and ischial tuberosity, along the back of the thigh, dividing into the tibial and common peroneal (fibular) nerves at a varying level proximal to the knee. The common peroneal (fibular) nerve divides at the level of the neck of the fibula in to superficial and deep peroneal nerves. During routine dissection for the first MBBS students, we observed an unusual trifurcation of the sciatic nerve on the back of both the thighs in the middle of the popliteal fossa of a 70 years old, donated embalmed male cadaver in the Department of Anatomy, K.J.Somaiya Medical college, Sion, Mumbai, India. The sciatic nerve terminates in the middle of the popliteal fossa in to the tibial, the superficial and the deep peroneal (fibular) nerves. The sural nerve was formed by the peroneal communicating branch of the deep peroneal nerve in the popliteal fossa, and descends on the posterior surface of the gastrocnemius to enter the superficial fascia about the middle of the back of the leg. It is then joined by the tibial communicating branch from the tibial nerve. The photographs of the trifurcation of the sciatic nerve were taken for proper documentation and for ready reference. The variation was bilateral. There were no associated arterial and muscular variations found in the same cadaver. Conclusion: The trifurcation of the sciatic nerve is very rare. The knowledge of trifurcation of sciatic nerve is important for clinicians and surgeons. Clinically, the sural nerve is widely used for both diagnostic (biopsy and nerve conduction velocity studies) and therapeutic purposes (nerve grafting). Thus, a detailed knowledge of the anatomy of the sural nerve and its contributing nerves are important in carrying out these and other procedures.


A primitive equation ocean model is fit with strong constraints to non-synoptic hydrographic surveys in an unstable frontal current region, the Iceland–Faeroe Front. The model is first Ž . initialized from a time-independent objective analysis of non-synoptic data spanning 2 to 6 days . A truncated set of eddy-scale basis functions is used to represent the initial error in temperature, salinity, and velocity. A series of model integrations, each perturbed with one basis function for one dependent variable in one layer, is used to determine the sensitivity to the objective-analysis initial state of the match to the non-synoptic hydrographic data. A new initial condition is then determined from a generalized inverse of the sensitivity matrix and the process is repeated to account for non-linearity. The method is first tested in 'identical twin' experiments to demonstrate the adequacy of the basis functions in representing initial condition error and the convergence of the method to the true solution. The approach is then applied to observations gathered in August 1993 in the Iceland–Faeroe Front. Model fits are successful in improving the match to the true Ž data, leading to dynamically consistent evolution scenarios. However, the forecast skill here . defined as the variance of the model–data differences of the model runs from the optimized initial condition is not superior to less sophisticated methods of initialization, probably due to inadequate initialization data. The limited verification data in the presence of strong frontal slopes may not be sufficient to establish forecast skill, so that it must be judged subjectively or evaluated by other quantitative measures. q 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.


A copper-mediated annulation of 2-(1-substituted vinyl) anilines and aryl nitrosos is developed for the synthesis of 2,3-diaryl pyrazoles. Compared with previously reported sequential azobenzene C–H ortho-acylation, reduction and cyclization procedures towards such frameworks, no external reductant was required during this cyclization, where the vinyl served as a formal innate reductant. Moreover, in this procedure, no selectivity was involved in the case of Ar1 ≠ Ar2.


Process intensification has been the focus of increasing attention in recent years. A volume reduction of distillation and absorption units by a factor of 100 or more using rotating beds has been claimed. Industrial trickle-bed reactors are bulky because the liquid flow and interphase transport of the reacting species are governed by the earth's gravity, as in the case of distillation columns. To explore the possible process intensification in these reactors, we have measured the reaction rates of hydrogenation of α-methyl styrene with palladium as catalyst in the rotating beds of spherical particles and metal foam, which acted as catalyst support. To quantify the intensification achieved, the reaction rates were compared with those of conventional trickle beds. The enhancement in the reaction rates was in the range of 30–40 times in a centrifugal force field of about 450 times the gravitational force field. An industrial reactor of 60 m3 could be replaced with a rotating bed < 1.5 m3 in volume. It appears that there is a possibility of further process intensification. However, the volume reduction is possible only for mass-transfer limited reactions. © 2005 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2005


This essay reviews the Zhuangzian notion of zhen 真, often through the text's advancement of the zhenren 真人 ("genuine person," "true person") or zhenzhi 真知 ("genuine knowledge," "true knowledge"). Contemporary scholarship, in both Chinese and English, often presents zhen as analogous to the existentialist theory of authenticity, which correspondingly reflects on interpretations of the "self," and thereby the zhen person. Much of the Zhuangzi is a reaction to the Lunyu , including an ironic response to the Confucian cultivation project. If we establish our interpretation of the "self" against this background then we find that zhen in the Zhuangzi is actually used to argue against the Confucian identification of the person and self through social roles or conventions. However, advocating zhen does not suggest that there is some essential or core "self" to refer to; instead, it implies a natural state of responsiveness where the person acts efficaciously by being in line with what is obvious or affirmed in the situation. This essay thereby presents a reading of zhen that is historically and culturally consistent, and sets up the Zhuangzi as an alternative, and not an echo, to some of the major issues dealt with by the existentialist movement.


Our modern society demands a degree of connectivity between citizens, businesses, financial institutions and governments that must cross political and cultural boundaries.  Digital technology provides this connectivity and gives its users many valuable benefits. But at the same time, it provides a rich environment for criminal activity, ranging from vandalism to stolen identity to theft of classified government information. One of the modern crimes against property and ownership in the cyber-space is computer fraud. Despite being modern, the aforementioned crime has its roots in the principles of religious jurisprudence. In some cases, this crime is compatible with traditional regulations, and that is, when the computer is considered as a crime commitment device. Some of the computer frauds that take place in the context of electronic exchanges are considered as crimes as per the E-commerce Law (approved in 2003) of Iran. However, these regulations are flawed and until recent years, there was no comprehensive law in this regard. After so many years of legal vacuum, legislation of the Computer Crime Act 25/05/2009 led to partial settelment of the problems arising thereby. The present study intends to investigate computer fraud according to Iran's Computer Crime Act and also elaborate upon those international instruments in this regard.


Building from the 2002/03 contribution to the Global Competitiveness Report ("Governance Crossroads"), this paper argues that governance continues to be at a crossroad, its underperformance being evident in most regions and across many countries. This ('governance policy gap') contrasts with the strides that have been made in many countries in improving the content of macro-economic policies for well over a decade. Firms from emerging economies single out corruption and excessive bureaucracy among the top constraints to their business operations, while excessive bureaucracy and the tax regime are identified as top constraints by the respondent firms from the OECD. Neither inflation nor the exchange rate regime are rated as important constraints. Many countries currently have levels of governance that are insufficient to support their income levels and/or growth path, namely they experience a 'governance deficit', which we suggest it can be quantified.

We also review work analyzing the deeper determinants of governance, and find that in lower income countries the origins of a country's legal system may not matter significantly. Further, we empirically evaluate political dimensions of governance, such as the extent of 'capture' and undue influence by some politically connected powerful firms in shaping the regulations, laws and policies in a country. Unequal influence is closely associated with poor public and financial governance performance. Finally, this firm-level dataset permits the construction of a governance database at the city level, and initial results of an empirical exploration of determinants of city-level governance are presented. A key implication of this chapter refers to the focus on policies aimed at the nexus between corporate strategies and public governance—-emphasizing prevention, external accountability and transparency mechanisms—and challenges the value of traditional measures within the public sector (such as passing laws by fiat or creating new Anti-Corruption Commissions).


The Active Storage Facility for Residuals (Aktives Lager fur Ruckstande – ALfR) — an open-air controlled area — was used for the storage of radioactive waste (liquid and solid waste) at the site of the NPP Rheinsberg in the former GDR. Liquid waste was cemented and dumped for near surface final disposal. During the period of operation of the ALfR some incidents happened. Residues of evaporated cooling water of unknown amount (ca. 1–10 m3 ), the drop-out from small leakages and the wash-off from contaminated open-air storage barrels contaminated the soil. Since 1997 the buildings of the ALfR have been decommissioned and the site will be remediated. From the beginning of decommissioning up to now the groundwater has been monitored. This paper shows different steps of decommissioning and explains the results of groundwater monitoring. Currently 33 sampling points are being used for sampling groundwater from different layers. The radiological parameters under examination are Cobalt-60, Cesium-137, Strontium-90 and Tritium. Non-radiological parameters like Bore, Potassium, Sodium, Nitrate, pH value and TOC (total organic carbon) are also being investigated. Since 1997 the activity concentration of Cobalt-60 and Tritium in the groundwater has been decreasing. The activity concentration of Strontium-90 had increased from 1997 to 2007. Since 2007 activity concentration of Strontium-90 has been decreasing. 350 m away from the ALfR, in the direction of groundwater flow, the Lake Stechlin is located in a nature protection area. The groundwater beyond the ALfR-site is not used as drinking-water and up to now there has been no detectable contamination of Lake Stechlin. Therefore there is no radiological impact on humans by contaminated groundwater. The hypothetic effective dose of Cobalt-60, Tritium and Strontium-90 resulting from postulated consumption of groundwater was determined using consumption rates according to the German Radiation Protection Ordinance. In case of using the groundwater as drinking-water the annual effective dose is 0,4 mSv/a at a postulated drinking-water well on the ALfR-site and 2,5 μSv/a at a postulated drinking water well in a distance of 142 m. Results of the observations: The observations of direction and velocity of the flow of the ground-water principally confirms the transportation model made at the beginning of decommissioning of ALfR. In vertical direction, the real spread of contamination in the groundwater is smaller than assumed. The dilution of Co-60 is higher than assumed. In contrast to the assumptions of the transportation model, Cesium-137 has a lower mobility.Copyright © 2011 by ASME


The process of saving metadata committed to track all changes to some data, is known as ""provenance"". In the AEC/FM sector provenance data can be exploited for tracking all interactions of different users between each other and with parts of data. For a particular application, we need to consider which metadata are essential for future queries and who is going to use these. The IFC standard already contains some provenance concepts in its entity structure. We have considered these provenance concepts to build a provenance tracking software. The provenance ontology server was developed by using the OWL ontology language, already available IFC concepts and some complementary concepts that we had to include for the sake of generality of our implementation. The developed prototype allows us to upload an IFC file to a web enabled service that parses it and saves instances of retrieved concepts for later queries, according to the ontology we have defined.""


The lake Bohinjsko jezero is the largest natural lake in Slovenia. It is 4.350 m long, 1.250 m wide and 45 m deep. Nevertheless, biological and chemical indicators show that the inflow of nutrients has been increasing in recent years as a result of tourism. Furthermore, the presence in the lake of coliform bacteria of faecal origin has been detected. In 2006, several locations along the lake shore were controlled to investigate the faecal bacterial contamination of the lake. In 2007, the research was expanded from the lake itself to the affluent of the lake, the Savica river and adjacent high-mountain lakes. The evaluation of coliform bacteria used "the most probable number" (MPN) method. The number of bacteria in water samples varied from 0 to more than 438 per 100-mL sample. The results support the conclusion that part of the faecal coliform bacterial population originates from septic tanks in houses and other dwellings, and a smaller part from pastures, meadows and fields in the lake area.


This paper presents the results of an experimental investigation on suction removal of sediment from between armor blocks/stones placed on a loose bed. The process of suction has been investigated. It was found that the vortices that form in the holes between the armor blocks are key to the process. The sediment swept into these vortices is entrained into the main body of the flow by these same vortices (the suction removal of sediment from between the armor blocks). The critical condition for the onset of suction was determined. It was found that the onset of suction is governed by two parameters: (1) the Shields parameter (based on the sediment size); and (2) the ratio of sediment size to stone size, d/D. The variation of the critical Shields parameter for suction as a function of d/D was determined for a broad range of the parameter d/D, namely, 0.001 & d/D # 1. The timescale of the suction process and the downward displacement of stones (the general lowering of the armor layer) have also been investigated.


As core functional components of the medium and high grade CNC machine tools, the power-driven turret involves high technology and complicated structures. Traditionally, in the study of low speed turrets` performances, the effects of thermal influences are often negligible. However, on the high speed conditions, thermal effect cannot be neglected. This paper establishes the high speed turret 3-D Model and the Finite Element Model (FEM), and investigates and analyzes temperature fields and thermal deformations. Experimental measurements are implemented on the surfaces of the original model turret in order to compare with the simulation results, modified turret is analyzed, and thermal behaviors are proved to be available on the idle operating conditions. It manifests that the distributions of the thermal behaviors have intensive relations with the speeds of the transmission system.


BACKGROUND
Primary knee osteoarthritis is the leading cause of chronic disability and pain among adults worldwide. Retro-walking has been shown to reduce patellofemoral pain, increases functional capability while strengthening the lower limbs and improving proprioception and balance. We aim to examine the effects of retro-walking on symptoms, pain, and perceived ability to perform daily activities in comparison to forward-walking in subjects with primary knee osteoarthritis.

METHODS
This was a single-blinded, randomised control trial involving 34 subjects between the age of 45-70 years (58.41 ± 5.93) comparing retro-walking (RW) to forward-walking (FW). Subjects were randomly allocated to receive either RW with structured resistance training (SRT) or FW with SRT; 3 times a week for 12 weeks. The symptoms, pain, and function of daily living sub scores of the Knee Injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (KOOS) along with Timed up and go (TUG) and Chair stand test (CST) were assessed at baseline and after 12 weeks. The outcomes were analysed with two-way repeated measure analysis of variance.

RESULTS
Significant improvements for all outcomes were observed intra-group (p-value < 0.05) after 12 weeks. The KOOS sub scores, TUG and CST times was not statistically significant between study groups (pvalue >0.05). However, the partial eta squared scores for all outcomes were better in the RW group compared to FW except for CST.

CONCLUSIONS
It can be concluded that RW is a feasible and non-inferior option to FW in the rehabilitation of subjects with bilateral knee OA.


One of the greater issues in Genetic Programming (GP) is the computational effort required to run the evolution and discover a good solution. Phenomena such as program bloating (where genetic programs rapidly grow in size) can quickly exhaust available memory resources and slow down the evolutionary process, while the heavy cost of performing fitness evaluation can make problems which have a lot of available data very slow to solve. These issues may limit GP in some tasks it can appropriately be applied to, as well as inhibit its applications in time/space sensitive environments. In this thesis, we look at developing solutions to some of these issues in GP computational cost. First, we develop an algebraic program simplification method based on simple rules and hashing techniques, and use this method in conjunction with the standard GP on a variety of tasks. Our results suggest that program simplification can lead to a significant reduction in program size, while not significantly changing the effectiveness of the systems in finding solution programs. Secondly, we analyse the effects of program simplification on the internal GP "building blocks" to investigate whether simplification is a destructive or constructive force. Using two models for building blocks (numerical-nodes and the more complex fixed-depth subtree), we track building blocks through GP runs on a symbolic regression problem, both with and without using simplification. We find that the program simplification process can both disrupt and construct building blocks in the GP populations. However, GP systems using simplification appear to retain important building blocks, and the simplification process appears to lead to an increase in genetic diversity. These may help explain why using simplification does not reduce the effectiveness of GP systems in solving tasks. Lastly, we develop two methods of reducing the cost of fitness evaluation by reducing the number of node evaluations performed. The first method is elitism avoidance, which avoids re-evaluating programs which have been placed in the population using elitismreproduction. Thismethod reduces the CPU time for evolving solutions for six different GP tasks. The second method is a subtree caching mechanism which store fitness evaluations for subtrees in a cache so that they may be fetched when these subtrees are encountered in future fitness evaluations. Results suggest that using this mechanism can significantly reduce both the number of node evaluations and the overall CPU time used in evolving solutions, without reducing the fitness of the solutions produced.


This article examines the masculinities evident through fly fishing for salmon and trout in the South West of England. It identifies the way that many accounts of rural masculinities focus on particularly macho traits such as strength, resilience and domination and particular relationships with nature and the environment. Such macho traits are evident in the masculinities of angling – the angler regularly discusses issues of competition and duelling with nature. The trophies of such encounters become significant as they are used to summon life to stories and become crucial in narrating masculinity. However alongside these macho traits are numerous additional masculinities which are in tension with the more macho elements. These 'additional masculinities' become evident in the watery landscapes of angling; as such these waterscapes can be considered as liminal spaces as they enable masculinities to slip and reform. Therefore what emerges is a cadence to masculinity with different subject positions becoming significant in different spaces.


Dystonia is a neurological disorder characterized by involuntary twisting movements and unnatural postures. There are many different forms of dystonia, which affect over three million people worldwide. Effective treatments are available only for a minority of patients, so new treatments are sorely needed. Several animal species have been used to develop models for different forms of dystonia, each with differing strengths and weaknesses. This review outlines the strategies that have been used to exploit these models for drug discovery. Some have been used to dissect the pathogenesis of dystonia for the identification of molecular targets for intervention. Others have been used for the empirical identification of candidate drugs. Therefore, the animal models provide promising new tools for developing better treatments for dystonia.


Recently, there has been a substantial increase in efforts to develop 3-D visualization technologies that can provide the viewers with a realistic 3-D visual experience. Various terms such as "reality communication" have been used to categorize these efforts. In order to provide the viewers with a complete and realistic visual sensation, the display or visualization system and the displayed content need to match the physiological 3-D information sensing capabilities of the human visual system which can be quite complex. These may include spatial and temporal resolutions, depth perception, dynamic range, spectral contents, nonlinear effects, and vergence accommodation effects. In this paper, first we present an overview of some of the 3-D display research efforts which have been extensively pursued in Asia, Europe, and North America among other areas. Based on the limitations and comfort-based requirements of the human visual system when viewing a nonnatural visual input from 3-D displays, we present an analytical framework that combines main perception and human visual requirements with analytical tools and principles used in related disciplines such as optics, computer graphics, computational imaging, and signal processing. Building on the widely used notion of light fields, we define a notion of perceivable light fields to account for the human visual system physiological requirements, and propagate it back to the display device to determine the display device specifications. This helps us clarify the fundamental and practical requirements of the 3-D display devices for reality viewing communication. In view of the proposed analytical framework, we overview various methods that can be applied to overcome the extensive information needed to be displayed in order to meet the requirements imposed by the human visual system.


Recurrence of hepatitis C is a significant problem after liver transplantation. This prospective study was done to assess the rate of recurrence and discuss two possible treatment modalities that have been successful in avoiding retransplantation. Twenty-one patients underwent orthotopic liver transplantation for hepatitis C at a metropolitan medical center over a 34-month period. The mean follow-up interval was 13.4 +/- 2.2 months (range 5-28 months). The patients were routinely evaluated with clinic visits and liver function tests, specifically total bilirubin, serum glutamic-oxaloacetic transaminase, and gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase. If values were elevated, the patient was admitted to the hospital for liver biopsy. Ten of the 21 patients demonstrated recurrence on biopsy. Two of 10 patients required no therapy. Interferon A was initiated in the remaining eight. Three of the eight patients had no significant response to interferon and were given intravenous ribavirin under an experimental protocol. Two of these three showed significant improvement in liver function values. The third died of chronic rejection. The incidence of recurrent hepatitis C after liver transplantation is significant. Many centers have had to resort to retransplantation. Our results show that with early detection and aggressive treatment with interferon and ribavirin, hepatitis C can be controlled and retransplantation may be avoided.


CONVERSATIONS ABOUT READING: THE VOICES OFSTUDENTS IN THEIR K-12 JOURNEYJennifer Clinton, Ed DUniversity of Pittsburgh, 2004The initial objective of this study was to gain insight from students about their K-12 reading experience. In fifth, eighth, and eleventh grade the data were collected while conversing with students in focus groups. Conversations were centered around the Focus Group Checklist which was divided into three parts: 1) Teacher-Assigned Reading; 2) Read and Interact with Text; and 3) Content Areas. The second objective was to outline a process for documentation of student opinions about K-12 education programs.The results of this study indicated that (1) background building prior to reading assignments acted as a motivational component that enabled the fifth grade students tomake personal connections with text; (2) In both middle and high school, there was adiminishing in the practice of activating students' prior knowledge; (3) Vocabularyinstruction consisted of relearning words that fifth grade students were already familiarwith or knew well and; (4) limited opportunity for the application of "new" words;(5) Requirement for the learning of new words decreased as students moved throughhigh school; (6) Instruction for question and answer relationships consisted ofdirecting fifth grade students to reread or even pointing out where "answers" were found in the text; (7) Instruction that included modeling, utilization of samples, and specificcriteria for question and answer responses were provided only for the "advanced" students in eighth grade; (8) Reinforcement of literal responses from text were provided foreleventh graders instead of instruction for a critical response based on multiple sources and;(9) the "advanced" classes were often provided with explicit criteria and detail about how to answer questions.Recommendations and implications for policy based on the voices of the students were presented.


Off-chain transaction networks can mitigate the scalability issues of today's trustless blockchain systems such as Bitcoin. However, these peer-to-peer networks also introduce a new attack surface which is not yet fully understood. This paper identifies and analyzes a novel type of Denial-of-Service attack which is based on attracting routes, i.e., which exploits the way transactions are routed and executed along the channels of the network in order to attract nodes to route through the attacker. This attack is conceptually interesting as it highlights a fundamental design tradeoff for the defender (who determines its own routes): to become less susceptible to hijacking, a rational node has to pay higher fees to nodes that forward its payments. We focus on the Lightning network, and we investigate both the structure of the network using real data collected over an extended period of time, and the routing algorithms of different implementations. We find that the three most common implementations (Ind, C-lightning, Eclair) approach routing differently. We then explore the routes chosen by these implementations in the current Lightning network. We find that very few nodes route most of the traffic: nearly 60% of all routes pass through only five nodes, while 80% go through only 15 nodes. Thus, a relatively small number of colluding nodes can deny service to a large fraction of the network. We then turn to study an external attacker who creates links to the network and draws more routes through its nodes by asking for lower fees. While finding the optimal set of links to create is NP-complete, we show that using a greedy attack strategy, an attacker can obtain a 1 -- 1/e approximation. Given this strategy, we find that just five new links are enough to draw the majority (65% - 75%) of the traffic regardless of the implementation being used. The cost of creating these links is very low. Drawing this traffic, the attacker is then able to deny service to all those who route through it. We further show that newer routing algorithms recently introduced into lnd, to penalize routes that failed in the past and avoid selecting them again, do not effectively prevent such attacks. Finally, we suggest modified routing policies, which may help alleviate the problem.


The current legal codends used in Mediterranean bottom trawl fisheries are at high risk of retaining undersized individuals of several commercial fish species. This entails that codends alone are unable to provide the desired exploitation pattern. A simple technological measure that potentially can provide higher release efficiency of undersized fish are Square-Mesh Panels (SMPs). SMPs are often applied in the upper section of the trawl belly, just ahead the codend. However, recent studies in the Mediterranean have demonstrated that SMPs mounted in this position provided limited release efficiency, because very few fish came into contact with their meshes. In attempt to improve SMPs efficiency in the Mediterranean bottom trawl fisheries, we applied them on the lateral sides of the last tapered section of the trawl belly, just ahead of the codend, and fitted two guiding panels in the trawl belly to enhance fish-SMP contact. We compared the catch performance of a standard commercial trawl with a 52 mm diamond-mesh codend and of a similar trawl fitted with lateral SMPs (70 mm mesh size) in the belly using a twin trawl. The study focused on red mullet ( Mullus barbatus ), a commercially important species, but data for gurnard ( Chelidonichthys lucerna and Chelidonichthys cuculus )  were also obtained and analysed. In contrast to previous research on SMPs mounted in the top panel of the trawl, in this study SMPs induced a significant effect on catch performance for red mullet, demonstrating that their lateral position involved greater fish-SMP contact. However, since the test trawl lost a significant amount of legal-sized red mullet compared with the standard trawl, the effect was not wholly positive, possibly due to an excessively large mesh size. Therefore, future studies should be encouraged to test lateral SMPs with smaller mesh sizes.


The clinicopathological findings on a 17-year-old female with the Möbius/ Moebius syndrome are reported. The signs and symptoms of this neuromuscular condition include congenital bilateral or unilateral palsies of the facial and abducens cranial nerves and a broad scope of multisystem abnormalities. A case of unilateral deficiencies of cranial nerves VI and VII, congenital ectrodactyly of toes, and multiple congenitally missing primary and permanent teeth is reported. A review of the literature reveals various ideas regarding the diversity of symptoms and the etiology of the syndrome. The purpose of this article is to report oral manifestations, such as congenitally missing teeth, associated with Möbius syndrome.


There is a big difficulty for teachers in order to reach the desired aims, and teachers need motivation to do this job properly. The aim of the study, which is managed in a quantitative approach, is to define the relationship between how teaching profession is seen for society and perception of teachers' professional motivation from a teacher's perception for both variables. And finally, analyses were made on how the teachers' professional perception from society predicts their professional motivation. The research has conducted on survey method. The sample of the study was consisted of 545 teachers working in primary school, middle high school and high school in the province center of Düzce. Both instruments used in the research (motivation of teaching and perception of society related to teaching profession) developed by researchers and pilot application was also carried out. As a result of the research, it was found that the professional perceptions of the teachers were in moderate level and the professional motivations were relatively high. The correlation between the professional perceptions and professional motivations of teachers' is positive and intermediate level. It has been revealed that the perception of the teaching profession of society was at a low level of the professional motivation of teachers. It is seen that the low-level coefficient in path analysis was close to Pearson Correlation between occupational perception and occupational motivation. According to teachers, the perception of the teaching profession in the society, has been found to be the most predictor of "the profession and the value attributed to the profession" as one of the subscales of the motivation scale. It is possible to say that as the value / importance assigned by the society to the teaching profession increases, the motivation of the teacher will increase at a low level.


Traditional satellite based AOD retrieval techniques with a coarse resolution such as collection 5 hardly provides a high spatial detail suitable for accurate AOD retrieval particularly over the ecologically stressed sites of East Africa. Furthermore, AOD retrievals from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS-collection 5) require a linear mixing model that utilizes the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) to calculate surface reflectance. Since NDVI is affected by the presence of aerosols in the atmosphere, an empirical linear relationship between short wave infrared (SWIR) and visible reflectance were estimated in order to calculate a modified aerosol free vegetation index (AFRI). Based on AFRI and the minimum reflectance technique (MRT), an improved linear mixing model was developed. Calculated Vis/SWIR ratio diverges from the one used in the hypothetical model for AOD retrieval. Likewise, the regression coefficients between retrieved AOD for the developed algorithm and AERONET were higher as compared to that of MODIS collection 5 and AERONET. These emphasize the need of using AFRI plus accurate selection of surface characteristics and aerosol type for accurate AOD retrieval over East Africa that is addressed by the developed algorithm. At low AERONET AOD values, the two algorithms i.e. MODIS and developed agree but as the AERONET AOD value increases, a discrepancy is noted between the two as a result of usingNDVI and AFRIin the MODIS and developed algorithms


Background: Lifestyles generally change across the life course yet no prospective study has examined direct associations between healthy lifestyle trajectories and subsequent cardiovascular disease (CVD) or all-cause mortality risk. Methods: Healthy lifestyle score trajectories during 2006–2007, 2008–2009, and 2010–2011 were collated through latent mixture modeling. An age-scale based Cox proportional hazard regression model was implemented to calculate hazard ratios (HR) with corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI) for developing CVD or all-cause mortality across healthy lifestyle trajectories. Results: 52,248 participants were included with four distinct trajectories identified according to healthy lifestyle scores over 6 years i.e., low-stable (n = 11,248), high-decreasing (n = 7,374), low-increasing (n = 7,828), and high-stable (n = 25,799). Compared with the low-stable trajectory, the high-stable trajectory negatively correlated with lower subsequent risk of developing CVD (HR, 0.73; 95% CI, 0.65–0.81), especially stroke (HR, 0.70; 95% CI, 0.62–0.79), and all-cause mortality (HR, 0.89; 95% CI, 0.80–0.99) under a multivariable-adjusted model. A protective effect for CVD events was observed only in men and in those without diabetes, while a reduced risk of all-cause mortality was observed only in those older than 60 years, though interactions were not statistically significant. Marginally significant interactions were observed between the changing body mass index (BMI) group, healthy lifestyle score trajectories and stratified analysis. This highlighted an inverse correlation between the high-stable trajectory and CVD in BMI decreased and stable participants as well as all-cause mortality in the stable BMI group. The low-increasing trajectory also had reduced risk of CVD only when BMI decreased and in all-cause mortality only when BMI was stable. Conclusions: Maintaining a healthy lifestyle over 6 years corresponds with a 27% lower risk of CVD and an 11% lower risk in all-cause mortality, compared with those engaging in a consistently unhealthy lifestyle. The benefit of improving lifestyle could be gained only after BMI change is considered further. This study provides further evidence from China around maintaining/improving healthy lifestyles to prevent CVD and early death.


Background and objectives: Medical students experience depression, burnout, and mental illness at a higher rate than general population. A better understanding of related risk factors can help target appropriate support services for them. The aim of the study was to assess the occurrence of depression and identify its risk factors among undergraduate students in a medical College in Kolkata, India. Methodology: A descriptive, cross-sectional study using a two stage, stratified cluster sampling technique was used to select a sample of 289 students. Data were collected using a self-administered, anonymous questionnaire based on Becks Depression Inventory II. Results: The mean score of students on depression scale was 10.47±10.39. 22.5 % of students tested positive for some form of depression while 6.2% had severe to extreme depression. The risk factors of depressive symptoms identified were older age, lower family income, students who did not choose admission in MBBS course on their own, had addictions, felt negatively about results, faced difficulty with study course and had relationship issues. Students with relationship issues in their personal lives were 3.7 times more likely to exhibit depressive symptoms than without them. Students who faced difficulty coping with study course were 2.18 times more likely to exhibit depressive symptoms than without them. Conclusion: Academic performance alone doesn't influence the mental health of students, rather factors like older age, socioeconomic status, role in choice of medical career, negative perception of academic performance, difficulty with study course and relationship issues are also important.


Abstract. We studied phytoplankton and protozooplankton community composition based on light microscopy, flow cytometry, and photosynthetic pigment data in the Atlantic
sector of the Southern Ocean during March 2019 (early austral autumn).
Sampling was focused on the area east of the prime meridian in the Kong Håkon VII Hav, including Astrid Ridge, Maud Rise, and a south–north transect at 6∘ E. Phytoplankton community composition throughout
the studied area was characterized by oceanic diatoms typical of the
iron-depleted high-nutrient, low-chlorophyll (HNLC) Southern Ocean. Topography and wind-driven iron supply likely sustained blooms dominated by the centric diatom Chaetoceros dichaeta at Maud Rise and at a station north of the 6∘ E transect.
For the remainder of the 6∘ E transect, diatom composition was similar to the previously mentioned bloom stations, but flagellates dominated
in abundance, suggesting a post-bloom situation and likely top-down control by krill on the bloom-forming diatoms. Among flagellates, species with
haptophyte-type pigments were the dominating group. At Astrid Ridge, overall
abundances were lower and pennate diatoms were more numerous than centric diatoms, but the community composition was nevertheless typical of HNLC areas. The observations described here show that C. dichaeta can form blooms beyond the background
biomass level and also fuels both carbon export and upper trophic levels within HNLC areas. This study is the first thorough assessment of
phytoplankton communities in this region and can be compared to other
seasons in future studies.


Cutting tools suffer severe abrasive friction and wear in high speed milling of graphite. Cutting forces were measured and analyzed using time-frequency analysis method to reveal the correlation between cutting force variations and tool wear evolution. The static and dynamic force components increased prominently with tool wear. The cutting force Fy was found the most sensitive to the tool wear evolution. The waveform of cutting force became periodic and irregular with the increase of tool wear. Good correlation was found between the first force harmonic and tool wear.


The following text is taken from the publisher's website:
"This work explores and untangles the theme of rape, and its counterpart ravishment, in Anglo-French cultural tradition between the disintegration of the classical world and the Renaissance. Tracing debate and dialogue across intellectual and literary discourses, Corinne Saunders places Middle English literary portrayals of rape and ravishment in the context of shifting legal, theological and medical attitudes. The treatment of rape and ravishment is considered across a wide range of literary genres: hagiography, where female saints are repeatedly threatened with rape; legendary history, as in the stories of Lucretia and Helen; and romance, where acts of rape and ravishment challenge and shape chivalric order, and romance heroes are conceived through rape. Finally, the ways in which Malory and Chaucer write and rewrite rape and ravishment are examined."


In this contribution, we propose a Distributed Concatenated Irregular Convolutional Coded Unity Rate Coded and Space Time Trellis Coded (DC-IrCC-URC-STTC) scheme for cooperative communications employing multiple single-antenna relays. Each coding arrangement is designed for efficient decoding convergence by employing non-binary Extrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) charts. The source node transmits two-stage IrCC-URC encoded symbols to two relays during the first transmission period. Then each relay performs two-stage URC-IrCC decoding and re-encodes the information bits using the three-stage concatenated coding scheme IrCC-URC-STTC. However, only the signals of one predefined STTC output are transmitted from each relay to the destination node during the second transmission period. At the destination, the received signals are treated as if they arrived from one transmitter employing STTC using two co-located transmit antennas. The simulation results show that the Monte-Carlo based performance of the DC-IrCC-URC-STTC scheme exactly matches the EXIT-chart analysis. It also performs closely to its idealised counterpart that assumes perfect decoding at the relays when an EXIT-chart based optimal algorithm is applied for selecting relays.


A new species of leaf insect, Phyllium ( Phyllium ) letiranti Cumming and Teemsma, new species (Phasmida: Phylliidae), is described from a series of males, females, and eggs from Peleng Island, Indonesia. This new species is the first record of the family Phylliidae on the island and is here differentiated from congeners. Keys to males, females, and eggs of the Phyllium species of Sulawesi and Peleng islands are included within.


Antler-based selective-harvest criteria (SHC) for white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) management is common on public lands throughout the Southeast despite little published literature examining their effects on harvest composition, antlered harvest per unit effort (HPE), and antler scores. Particularly, SHCs may select against larger-antlered males within each age cohort, resulting in smaller antler size of the residual population. We examined the effects of SHC on harvest composition, number of antlered deer harvested per 100 days hunter effort, and antler-scores within age cohorts on 23 Wildlife Management Areas (WMAs) in Florida. These WMAs, which had harvest regulations which required a legal antlered deer to have at least one antler ≥5 inches in length or at least one antler with two or more points, all implemented a more restrictive SHC requiring legal males to have at least one antler with three or more points between 2004 and 2008. We used generalized linear mixed models to assess effects of geographic region, age class, and pre-SHC type (5-inch or 2-point), and the interactions of these variables on age-class harvest composition, HPE, and gross Boone and Crockett (GBC) scores after implementation of the 3-point SHC. The 3-point SHC decreased the proportion of 1.5 year olds in harvest (P < 0.001) regardless of the pre-type SHC. Only on WMAs with a previous 5-inch SHC did antler size of the harvest increase (P < 0.01), but this effect was not different across age cohorts (P > 0.10). Also, only on WMAs with a 5-inch SHC did HPE decrease. Antler-based SHCs may increase average antler scores of males in harvest; however, they may cause longer than expected declines in antlered harvest.


This paper examines the influence of three accent structures on the reproduction of simple musical tunes by 5-, 7-, 9-, and 11-year-old children and adult pianists. In the metric accent structure, periodically spaced beats are accented; in the melodic accent structure, events after a jump in pitch interval or after a turn in contour are accented; and in the rhythmic grouping accent structure, the first and last events of a rhythmic group are accented. Four themes were created in which all three accent structures coincided. Three variations were derived from each theme in which each accent structure in turn was moved out of synchrony with the other two. In a fourth variation, all three accent structures were out of synchrony with each other. Both the children's and the pianists' reproductions were the most accurate when the accent structures coincided and the least accurate when they conflicted. Intermediate results were obtained when the rhythmic grouping and melodic accent structures were displaced, but no deterioration in performance was observed when the metric accent structure was displaced, demonstrating the relatively unimportant role played by intensity variations in these conditions. These results were obtained only for the melody scores- no deteriorations were found in the rhythm scores. For the pianists, fewer errors were made on the accented notes than on the others. So, the juxtaposition of the three accent structures does indeed influence the perception of musical sequences. When attention is drawn to the same point in time by several different accent structures, the segmentation of the sequence into smaller units is efficient and reproductions are good. However, when attention is drawn to too many points in time, segmentation is less efficient and reproductions are poorer.


Abstract This article discusses the reasons offered by one group of paraprofessionals to explain their decision to study for a work-related higher education programme. It reports on an ethnographically inspired piece of research that aimed to capture the initial motives that a group of teaching assistants had for studying for a Foundation degree at a post-1992 university. This group of students were largely female mature students, who were also overwhelmingly mothers with dependent children. It is suggested that Bourdieu's concepts of field, capital, habitus and illusio can be utilised to understand why these learners become motivated to enter higher vocational education. Workplace change and the pursuit of capital are highlighted as being a catalyst for the fracturing of illusio, career switching and undergraduate study. Somewhat counterintuitively, virtually all the students indicated that they had decided to study for a qualification that was primarily designed to help them succeed in their existing employment role as a means of acquiring a new occupational role and version of self.


Most universities today have developed intellectual property policies which clearly establish ownership rights in any commercially valuable process developed by professors and graduate students in a university laboratory. Increasingly, undergraduates are also being encouraged to take an active part in research since this often encourages them to go on to graduate school. It is also, in itself, a valuable learning experience. However, little thought has been given to the ownership rights of these undergraduate researchers. Universities must recognize that undergraduates may have ownership rights in research and must deal with this fact. A number of strategies for doing so are presented.


Telemedicine is said to change the way care is delivered. Nevertheless, it still faces barriers to overcome the pilot stage and reach a majority of patients in regular care. Missing consideration of user-centred design processes is one major reason for this development as individuals are a key component for the technology's success. Therefore, we aim to provide recommendations for a user-centred design process, which is, in turn, crucial to successfully implementing telemedicine innovations. To reach this aim, we identified individual-related barriers for telemedicine with an umbrella review. Furthermore, we related the barriers to the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) proposed by Venkatesh and colleagues. A theoretical explanation helps to generate a broader understanding of what prevents individual acceptance of telemedicine innovations. The provided recommendations are supposed to support researchers and practitioners planning future telemedicine solutions.


Abstract Objective Although health technology assessment (HTA) and healthcare quality improvement are distinct processes, a greater level of alignment in outcome measures used may increase the quality and efficiency of data collection. This study evaluates the agreement in outcome measures used in oncology for healthcare quality improvement and HTAs, and how these align to the International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement (ICHOM) standard sets. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional comparative analysis of ICHOM sets focusing on oncological indications and publicly available measures for healthcare quality and HTA reports published by the National Health Care Institute from the Netherlands and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence from the United Kingdom. Results All ICHOM sets and HTAs used overall survival, whereas quality improvement used different survival estimates. Different progression estimates for cancer were used in HTAs, ICHOM sets, and quality improvement. Data on health-related quality of life (HRQoL) was recommended in all ICHOM sets and all HTAs, but selectively for quality improvement. In HTAs, generic HRQoL questionnaires were preferred, whereas, in quality improvement and ICHOM sets, disease-specific questionnaires were recommended. Unfavorable outcomes were included in all HTAs and all ICHOM sets, but not always for quality improvement. Conclusions Although HTA and quality improvement use outcome measures from the same domains, a greater level of alignment seems possible. ICHOM may provide input on standardized outcome measures to support this alignment. However, residual discrepancies will remain due to the different objectives of HTA and quality improvement.


Low rates of school enrolment emerge as a significant problem among Syrian students in Turkey; however, enrolment in the school brings about new challenges not only for the Syrian refugee students but also for Turkish students and their teachers. In order to address this issue, this study aims to depict the perceived problems experienced by Syrian and Turkish students and their teachers. In the scope of the study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 primary and secondary school teachers to gather their perceived opinion on the issue. The findings are discussed within the context of school social work interventions.


The Report commenced, appropriately, by addressing the federal contract within which Australian agricultural policy is set. The Australian Constitution limits what can be done by the Commonwealth and State Governments and establishes procedures for settling arguments about where jurisdictions lie. There is a wider constitutional framework than the Constitution itself. It includes, for example, the Australian Agricultural Council which is the major means of co-ordinating powers and resolving conflicts between the Commonwealth and states in the field of agricultural policy. The federal contract also includes the wide range of co-operative approaches to policy, such as statutory marketing intitutions and the complementary legislation which supports them. The issue of federalism runs through the whole of the Report, but only in Chapter 2 was it addressed as a central issue. The Group viewed the Constitution itself as virtually immutable. The Australian Agricultural Council was criticised for acting only slowly and by consensus. Where there is a fundamental conflict of interest, the Commonwealth's financial strength may need to be used to encourage state co-operation. The emergence of the National Farmers' Federation was seen as hopeful, and there was a hint that a formal link between the Council and the Federation could facilitate consensus. But, on the whole, the tone of the Report regarding the federal contract was not enthusiastic. It was seen to constrain opportunities for change rather than to create them. Issues for the 1980s with respect to inter-governmental relations were expected to be similar to those of the past. In Chapter 2, the Group provided a brief synopsis of the respective roles of the Commonwealth and State Governments in areas covered in the rest of the Report, namely, assistance, marketing, international trade, transport, innovation and resource management. But having set the scene with an overview of the constitutional framework, the Group did not return to a federal overview of policy options. It is with that important task in view that I will address briefly three of the issues raised in Chapter 2, namely, assistance, marketing and international trade, and comment on Commonwealth grants to the states which are relevant to the remaining issues. My purpose is to highlight some policy dilemmas which need to be resolved within a federal context.


Glycosphingolipids (GSL) are important determinants of the functional organization of cellular membranes. They are controlled by the spatial organization of their metabolism and by specificity in transport. The aim of this thesis was to gain insight into the function of membrane lipids by learning more about their localization and intracellular transport processes. Glucosylceramide (GlcCer), the simplest GSL, is synthesized on the cytosolic side of the Golgi and must reach the Golgi lumen for lactosylceramide (LacCer) synthesis. In the present work I devised a new assay to measure this event based on the ability of the glycolipid transfer protein GLTP to insert or extract glycolipids from membranes. In contrast to the short-chain analogs of GlcCer that were studied before, little natural GlcCer translocated across isolated Golgi membranes. By targeting a GlcCer sulfotransferase to the ER, it was shown that, instead, GlcCer was transported back to the ER and into the ER lumen via a pathway that depended on the late Golgi-protein FAPP2. A FAPP2 knockdown strongly reduced the conversion of GlcCer to LacCer, showing that GlcCer destined for higher glycolipid synthesis follows the FAPP2 pathway. GlcCer was also transported to the cell surface, and this GlcCer transport continued in the presence of brefeldin A. Because brefeldin blocks vesicular traffic, GlcCer must have followed a non-vesicular pathway including transmembrane translocation across a post-Golgi membrane, possibly the plasma membrane. The post-Golgi GlcCer translocation was independent of the multidrug transporters that translocate short-chain GlcCer analogs. These analogs have been used for years to determine intracellular lipid transport due to the lack of methods for natural lipids. Using our new GLTP assay we now measured that the post-Golgi translocation was selectively inhibited by concanamycin A, an inhibitor of the vacuolar proton ATPase. Concanamycin A and other inhibitors of the V-ATPase abolished the appearance of GlcCer on the cell surface. In addition, GlcCer transport decreased when intracellular proton gradients were abolished using a proton ionophore, indicating that not the activity of the V-ATPase, but the proton gradient established by it is required for flipping GlcCer. Concanamycin A did not reduce synthesis and transport of GM3, a complex GSL, which shows that newly synthesized GlcCer follows independent pathways to the lumen of the Golgi and to the cell surface. Our earlier findings that GlcCer stimulates the V-ATPase suggests that the GlcCer transport mechanisms may be part of a cellular regulatory system, whereby the GlcCer concentration on the cytosolic surface determines the lumenal pH in cellular compartments.


Science – farming partnerships can improve our understanding of how land management behaviours sustain or enhance life-sustaining soil ecosystems. However, it remains a challenge to establish partnerships between researchers and practitioners that complement the ways in which farmers acquire and value knowledge and can also advance soil science. A pilot study was conducted to explore these issues in rela-tion to earthworm monitoring. It showed that farmers were interested in comparing their field results to research experiments to inform their decision-making. Social media was used to support farmers' earthworm monitoring schemes, with a concomi-tant sampling of research experiments to create capacity for shared learning. Con-structive feedback from the scientific community was sought using an online questionnaire. An Autumn 2018 survey generated 152 field analyses from farmlands in England, and 48% of participants' fields and the research experiment showed no evidence for earthworms being widespread and/or the presence of all three ecological groups of earthworms. A Spring 2019 survey generated earthworm population data from farmland soils around the world, amassing 11,464 earthworms assessed over 2,200 ha in the UK. A total of 12 scientists (from 30 questionnaire invitations) volunteered their time and expertise to support the survey. Conclusions helped to prioritise future improvements in earthworm monitoring, which should include photographs of earthworms for verification of the data, long-term monitoring and integration with soil properties. Most (83%) perceived this earthworm survey would likely improve farmland soil health and so would recommend its use in the UK. The survey is being independently taken forward and used as a metric by both private and public stakeholders, demonstrating authentic knowledge transfer in soil science.


Performance in French as a foreign language (FFL) in secondary schools in Kenya had declined since the year 2006. Student teachers entering university to pursue studies in French are finding it more and more challenging to follow lectures delivered in French. Students' performance in the national Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examinations seemed to have been affected when the examination format was changed to include testing of communicative competence, in all skills. To rescue this situation, the need arose for the teachers of French to use pedagogical approaches that would enhance communicative competence in FFL teaching and learning. The Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach had been adopted as a method for use in the teaching of FFL in Kenya. It was observed from students' performance that there has been a decline in performance in French since this change. This implies there are problems in the implementation and/or application of this approach. This paper is based on a study conducted to investigate the pedagogical implications of use of the CLT in teaching of French in secondary schools in Kenya. The objectives of the study were to: (a) establish activities that facilitate the application of the CLT, (b) establish teachers' preparedness in using the CLT, (c) find out other methods being used to teach French, (d) identify the challenges faced by teachers and students of French and how these were mitigated, (e) establish availability and use of resources for teaching and learning of FFL. The descriptive survey design was used for the study. Ten schools in 5 Counties of the Central region of Kenya were sampled for the study. Other samples were 10 principals of secondary schools teaching French and 109 students of French. The instruments for data collection were: a classroom observation guide, a teacher's questionnaire, a principal's interview schedule and a students' focus group discussion guide. A pilot study was conducted prior to the main study. Data were collected and analysed qualitatively using basic statistics. Inferential data were analysed using the chi-square. The findings of the study showed there was a marked degree of omission in the teaching and learning of French. The number of contact hours was found to be inadequate since French is a foreign language. Lack of modern equipment and shortage of other resources had negative effects, in relation to use of the CLT. The study also showed there was a difference between teachers' knowledge of theory and practice, with regard to CLT. Conclusions and Recommendations were made to make teaching and learning of French effective in the attainment of communicative competence.


Experimental decomposition of contributions of electron scattering events in deeply scaled interconnects has been complicated by the fact that grain size and line dimensions are generally not varied independently. In this paper, we describe a combination of experiments to examine scattering mechanism independently. The cross section of was changed by recessing individual copper interconnects from the top using wet chemical etching, which was combined with repeated cryogenic resistance measurements. A fit for the grain boundary reflectivity was then obtained. In addition, it was found that the average grain size increase from the bottom to the top of the interconnect. This was confirmed by TEM based grain size measurements. Further, in order to assess surface scattering, magnetoresistance was employed for the first time for interconnects. It is observed to be sensitive to the geometry of the line. The method also allows for independent assessment of sidewall vs. bottom/top surface scattering. Results indicate that sidewall scattering is more severe than top/bottom surface scattering.


Infectious diseases, particularly bovine respiratory disease (BRD) and neonatal calf diarrhea (NCD), are prevalent in calves. Efficient health-monitoring tools to identify such diseases on time are lacking. Common practice (i.e., health checks) often identifies sick calves at a late stage of disease or not at all. Sensor technology enables the automatic and continuous monitoring of calf physiology or behavior, potentially offering timely and precise detection of sick calves. A systematic overview of automated disease detection in calves is still lacking. The objectives of this literature review were hence: to investigate previously applied sensor validation methods used in the context of calf health, to identify sensors used on calves, the parameters these sensors monitor, and the statistical tools applied to identify diseases, to explore potential research gaps and to point to future research opportunities. To achieve these objectives, systematic literature searches were conducted. We defined four stages in the development of health-monitoring systems: (1) sensor technique, (2) data interpretation, (3) information integration, and (4) decision support. Fifty-four articles were included (stage one: 26; stage two: 19; stage three: 9; and stage four: 0). Common parameters that assess the performance of these systems are sensitivity, specificity, accuracy, precision, and negative predictive value. Gold standards that typically assess these parameters include manual measurement and manual health-assessment protocols. At stage one, automatic feeding stations, accelerometers, infrared thermography cameras, microphones, and 3-D cameras are accurate in screening behavior and physiology in calves. At stage two, changes in feeding behaviors, lying, activity, or body temperature corresponded to changes in health status, and point to health issues earlier than manual health checks. At stage three, accelerometers, thermometers, and automatic feeding stations have been integrated into one system that was shown to be able to successfully detect diseases in calves, including BRD and NCD. We discuss these findings, look into potentials at stage four, and touch upon the topic of resilience, whereby health-monitoring system might be used to detect low resilience (i.e., prone to disease but clinically healthy calves), promoting further improvements in calf health and welfare.


Imaging FlowCytobot (IFCB) combines video and flow cytometric technology to capture images of nano‐ and microplankton (∼10 to >100 μm) and to measure the chlorophyll fluorescence associated with each image. The images are of sufficient resolution to identify many organisms to genus or even species level. IFCB has provided >200 million images since its installation at the entrance to the Mission‐Aransas estuary (Port Aransas, TX, USA) in September 2007. In early February 2008, Dinophysis cells (1–5 · mL−1) were detected by manual inspection of images; by late February, abundance estimates exceeded 200 cells · mL−1. Manual microscopy of water samples from the site confirmed that D. cf. ovum F. Schütt was the dominant species, with cell concentrations similar to those calculated from IFCB data, and toxin analyses showed that okadaic acid was present, which led to closing of shellfish harvesting. Analysis of the time series using automated image classification (extraction of image features and supervised machine learning algorithms) revealed a dynamic phytoplankton community composition. Before the Dinophysis bloom, Myrionecta rubra (a prey item of Dinophysis) was observed, and another potentially toxic dinoflagellate, Prorocentrum, was observed after the bloom. Dinophysis cell‐division rates, as estimated from the frequency of dividing cells, were the highest at the beginning of the bloom. Considered on a daily basis, cell concentration increased roughly exponentially up to the bloom peak, but closer inspection revealed that the increases generally occurred when the direction of water flow was into the estuary, suggesting the source of the bloom was offshore.


We provide explicit solutions for government spending multipliers during a liquidity trap and within a fixed exchange regime using standard closed and open-economy models. We confirm the potential for large multipliers during liquidity traps. For a currency union, we show that self-financed multipliers are small, always below unity. However, outside transfers or windfalls can generate larger responses in out- put, whether or not they are spent by the government. Our solutions are relevant for local and national multipliers, providing insight into the economic mechanisms at work as well as the testable implications of these models.


Pollution spills are a serious threat to rivers causing fish kills, and lasting damage to the biological systems of rivers. At present financial penalties are used to deter such incidents but no mitigation system exists. A multiple method approach involving a hydrological and water chemistry based field study, a flume tank experiment, a computer fluid dynamics model and a 1D flow model was under taken to examine the feasibility of using a wave of water released from a reservoir to dilute pollution spills.
Nine waves were released from reservoirs on three different catchments. Water quality was measured downstream of sewage treatment works and the progress of the wave was tracked down the river with gauges. Additionally in one experiment a slug of rhodamine dye was released into the river ahead of a wave. To understand the impact of a wave on mixing processes within the water column, in particular longitudinal dispersion, a series of flume tank and computer fluid dynamics experiments were ran. In both experiment sets a wave was released from one end of a tank and a slug of either rhodamine dye, or tracked particles was released mid tank, the interaction between the wave and the dye was then captured as footage and analysed.
Across the three sets of experiments waves were found to move significantly faster than the baseflow with mean velocities ranging between 0.86ms-1 1.63ms-1. In the Holme River a dye slug would be caught within 3 hours and 46 minutes. Catch up times and response times were both demonstrated with a dye test and estimated with a 1D model providing management focused results previously unreported in the literature. Dilution of water quality parameters including NH4 and conductivity was recorded during wave passage at the sewage treat works outflows in the majority of experiments. Peak dilutions of 59% for NH4 and 58% for conductivity were recorded. An increase in longitudinal dispersion with wave magnitude was observed in the computer fluid dynamics model but unclear within the flume tank.


This study defines calcium-dependent actin polymerization by nuclear Arp2/3 complex as essential for CD4+ T cell help. T cells need nuclear F-actin T cell activation is regulated by numerous mechanisms upon T cell antigen receptor (TCR) engagement, including induction of specific cytokines by transcription factors like NF-κB and NFAT. Tsopoulidis et al. now show that TCR engagement causes rapid nuclear actin polymerization to create a dynamic actin filament network that is critical to CD4+ T cell effector functions. Nuclear actin filament polymerization involves the nuclear Arp2/3 complex that is induced by nuclear Ca2+ and regulated by N-Wasp and NIK. Specific inhibition of nuclear actin filament formation impairs T cell effector responses, including cytokine expression and CD4+ T cell help for antibody production. Together, these data reveal a role for nuclear actin filaments in driving CD4+ T cell effector functions. T cell antigen receptor (TCR) signaling triggers selective cytokine expression to drive T cell proliferation and differentiation required for immune defense and surveillance. The nuclear signaling events responsible for specificity in cytokine gene expression upon T cell activation are largely unknown. Here, we uncover formation of a dynamic actin filament network in the nucleus that regulates cytokine expression for effector functions of CD4+ T lymphocytes. TCR engagement triggers the rapid and transient formation of a nuclear actin filament network via nuclear Arp2/3 complex, induced by elevated nuclear Ca2+ levels and regulated via N-Wasp and NIK. Specific interference with TCR-induced formation of nuclear actin filaments impairs production of effector cytokines and prevents generation of antigen-specific antibodies but does not interfere with immune synapse formation and cell proliferation. Ca2+-regulated actin polymerization in the nucleus allows CD4+ T cells the rapid conversion of TCR signals into effector functions required for T cell help.


Industrialized construction (IC) as a promising construction mode has been increasingly adopted in China due to its advantages of enhancing productivity and reducing the labor intensiveness in the construction industry. An objective and systematic evaluation of the IC mode is essential by clarifying the current weak areas in application and improving project performance. The meager existing studies have considered evaluating the IC maturity of prefabricated construction projects from the perspective of project governance. This study proposed an industrialized construction maturity model (ICMM) involving organizational enablers by employing the framework of the well-established European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) excellence model. The evaluation indicator system consisting of two parts (i.e., "enablers" and "results") were abstracted by a literature review and expert interviews. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) approach was used to weight the indicators. The maturity of IC projects was rated as four levels (i.e., initial, upgraded, integrated, and optimal levels). The proposed ICMM was validated by conducting a multi-case study, four typical building projects that adopted prefabricated construction techniques in Shanghai were selected and evaluated by the proposed ICMM. Results showed that the ICMM can objectively and comprehensively realize the status quo of IC projects and help managers to identify weak areas of the current IC projects and performance improvement paths from the perspective of project governance. The ICMM was also evaluated to demonstrate its applicability and reliability through expert interviews.


Random projection algorithm is of interest for constrained optimization when the constraint set is not known in advance or the projection operation on the whole constraint set is computationally prohibitive. This paper presents a distributed random projection algorithm for constrained convex optimization problems that can be used by multiple agents connected over a time-varying network, where each agent has its own objective function and its own constrained set. We prove that the iterates of all agents converge to the same point in the optimal set almost surely. Experiments on distributed support vector machines demonstrate good performance of the algorithm.


The experimental large fluctuation in odd-even differences in moments of inertia of deformed actinide nuclei is investigated using the particle-number conserving (PNC) method for treating the cranked shell model with monopole and quadrupole pairing interactions. PNC calculations show that the large odd-even difference in moments of inertia mainly comes from the interference contributions j(μν) from particles in high j intruder orbitals μ and ν quite near the Fermi surface, which have no counterpart in the BCS formalism. The effective monopole and quadrupole pairing interaction strengths are determined to fit the experimental odd-even differences in binding energies and bandhead moments of inertia. The experimental results for the variation of moments of inertia with rotational frequency ω are reproduced well by the PNC calculation. The nearly identical experimental moments of inertia between 236U(gsb) and 238U(gsb) at low frequencies ω≤0.20 MeV are also reproduced quite well.


Urinary glycosaminoglycans are selectively included into calcium oxalate (CaOx) crystals precipitated from whole human urine: The presence of glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) in the organic matrix of urinary stones, and their known effects on CaOx crystallization have prompted speculation regarding their role in CaOx urolithiasis. The aim of this study was to examine the involvement of GAGs in the early stages of CaOx crystallization in human urine. Urine samples were collected from healthy men and CaOx crystallization was induced by the addition of a sodium oxalate load. The crystals were harvested and demineralized, and the GAG content of the resulting extract analysed by cellulose acetate electrophoresis. Only one GAG, heparan sulphate (HS) was detected in the organic matrix of the crystals; chondroitin sulphate (ChS), the most abundant urinary GAG, was conspicuously absent. Further experiments, in which varying amounts of HS and ChS were added to ultrafiltered (10,000 Da) urine prior to induction of calcium oxalate crystallization, showed that ChS was included into the crystals only when HS was absent from the urine. It was concluded that the selective inclusion of GAGs into crystals and stones is a function related more to relative binding affinity than to ambient GAG concentration and that HS and ChS compete for specific binding sites on the crystal surface.


Abstract This paper deals with crowdfunding as a new and alternative mechanism of nonprofit funding which has thus far attracted little scholarly attention in the Czech context. It focuses on the factors that affect a campaign's overfunding rate and determines whether these factors are consistent among different forms of project creators. A comprehensive analysis of reward-based crowdfunding in the Czech Republic was conducted based on the data from 617 projects using the Czech crowdfunding platform Hithit that were categorized according to the status of the project creator. Using binary logistic regression, a statistic estimation on an overall sample and on a sample of purely nonprofit projects was executed in order to observe if the outcomes diff er. Th e key empirical finding is that NGOs tend to raise fewer additional funds than other forms of project creators. Except for certain specific factors, the effects of the examined factors were consistent across all samples. Th is new and innovative approach to resource insufficiency by using alternative funding sources presents an important and unexplored research gap in the (post-) transitive context of nonprofit sector studies, enabling a view of policy implications for Czech NGOs.


We conducted eight experiments to examine how manipulating perception vs. action during walking affects perception-action recalibration in real and imagined blindfolded walking tasks. Participants first performed a distance estimation task (pretest), and then walked through an immersive virtual environment on a treadmill for 10 minutes. Participants then repeated the distance estimation task (posttest), the results of which were compared to their pretest performance. In Experiments 1a, 2a, and 3a, participants walked at a normal speed during recalibration, but the rate of visual motion was either twice as fast or half as fast as the participants' walking speed. In Experiments 1b and 2b, we tested 12-year-old children in the same recalibration task as 1a and 2a. In Experiments 1c, 2c, and 3b, the rate of visual motion was kept constant, but participants walked at either a faster or a slower speed. During preand posttest, we used either a blindfolded walking distance estimation task or an imagined walking distance estimation task. Additionally, participants performed the pretest and posttest distance estimation tasks in either the real environment or in the virtual environment. With blindfolded walking as the distance estimation task for preand posttest, we found a recalibration effect when either the rate of visual motion or the walking speed was manipulated during the recalibration phase. With imagined walking as the distance estimation task, we found a recalibration effect when the rate of visual motion was manipulated but not when the walking speed was manipulated in both the real environment and the virtual environment. Neither blindfolded walking nor imagined walking yielded significant results when 12year-old children were tested. Discussion focuses on how spatial updating processes operate on perception and action and on representation and action.


My intention this morning is to start the day's proceedings with a general overview of supply and demand as it relates to the business use of European Communities (EC) information in the United Kingdom. I will divide my paper into three main parts. I will look first at the nature of business demand for EC information, then at the sources from which demand is satisfied, and finally conclude with some observations on the match between supply and demand. In the time available I can do little more than sketch the principal characteristics of information provision, but by so doing I hope to provide something of a background and context against which to consider the more specialist papers which follow during the remainder of the day. I should also say that I use the phrase 'EC information' rather loosely as a convenient short‐hand expression to describe any kind of information by or about the EC which members of the business community might reasonably require in the conduct of their business activities.


Unitarily equivalence is the natural concept of equivalence between Hilbert space operators. Thus, this concept is the building block of other equivalence relations such as similarity, quasisimilarity, or even metric equivalence. In this project, firstly, it is shown that unitary equivalence, similarity, quasisimilarity and almost similarity are equivalence relations. Then, through the Putnam-Fuglede theorem, similarity and hence unitarily equivalence of normal operators were discussed. In addition, it is shown that, reducing subspaces are preserved under unitarily equivalence and that, similarity preserves nontrivial invariant subspaces, while quasisimilarity preserves nontrivial hyperinvariant subspaces. Moreover, several known results, (but which are scattered in different accounts), such as those touching on; equality of spectra of quasisimilar hyponormal operators, direct summands in relation to almost similarity, and metric equivalence of operators preserves Fredholmness were presented. As a consequence, more independent results were struck. For instance, a new equivalence relation, that is, unitary quasi-equivalence relation is introduced, and an observation which shows that, for an A-self-adjoint operator T , such that, T is metrically equivalent to S, then T 2 is similar to S, after demanding self-adjointedness of S, is deduced and proved.


We use ideas from kinetic proofreading, an error-correcting mechanism in biology, to identify new kinetic regimes in non-equilibrium systems. These regimes are defined by the sensitivity of the occupancy of a state of the system to a change in its energy. In biological contexts, higher sensitivity corresponds to stronger discrimination between molecular substrates with different energetics competing in the same reaction. We study this discriminatory ability in systems with discrete states that are connected by a general network of transitions. We find multiple regimes of different discriminatory ability when the energy of a given state of the network is varied. Interestingly, the occupancy of the state can even increase with its energy, corresponding to an "anti-proofreading" regime. The number and properties of such discriminatory regimes are limited by the topology of the network. Finally, we find that discriminatory regimes can be changed without modifying any "hard-wired" structural aspects of the system but rather by simply changing external chemical potentials.


Modeling a dead-time system is a common issue in engineering applications. To address this issue, existing research has employed neural networks and fuzzy logic-based intelligent systems. Herein, a dead-time system modeled with the aid of support vector machine regression, which has a good generalization feature, was investigated. The performance of the method proposed herein was examined with different parameters in linear and nonlinear dead-time systems.


Abyssal benthic trawling is time-consuming and therefore costly. In practice, such sampling to elucidate demersal fish ecology accrues largely opportunistically over long periods. Thus, it was that striking contrasts in fish morphology, ultimate size, f eedng pattern and fecundity were identified across a north-south boundary zone in the eastern North Atlant~c from 12 samples. The results were later refined with the addition of a further 13 samples. Now, collection of a further 20 samples, malung a total of 45, has broadened spatial coverage further. This has led to former sample groupings coalescing to complicate initial indications and published interpretations, although confirming the major findings. Hence, evidence of the influence of latitude on sample composition (together with that on the biological characteristics of the dominant species) was strengthened (consistent with response to changes in overlying productivity suggested initially). Yet the influence of bathymetry on sample composition was considerably weakened, although remaining s~gnlficant, especially along latitude 31°N close to the zone of ichthyofaunal change.


The pixel-based classification is an automatic approach for classifying all pixels in the image but does not take into account the spatial information for the region of interest. On the other hand, region-growing methods take into account the neighbourhood pixels information. However, in region-growing methods, a pixel-group called 'points of interest' are needed to initialise the growing process. In this paper, we proposed an optimised pixel-based classification by the cooperation of region growing strategy. This original segmentation scheme is performed in two phases for the automatic recognition of white blood cells (WBC): the first is a learning step with colour characteristics of each pixel in the image. The second is a region growing application by classifying neighbouring pixels from pixels of interest extracted by the ultimate erosion technique. This process has proved that the cooperation allows obtaining a nucleus and cytoplasm segmentation as closer to what as expected in the reference images.


Grape stalk constitutes a by-product of wineries with low economic value. The extraction of compounds with antioxidant capacity may be considered as an alternative to increasing its value. Prior to extraction there must be a drying process, which may affect not only the product structure but also the antioxidant activity of extracts. The aim of this work was to address the influence of grape stalk drying conditions on the subsequent extraction of antioxidant compounds. Prior to the extraction experiments, grape stalk was dried under different conditions: freeze dried and hot air dried at different temperatures (40, 70 and 100 °C). The extraction experiments were carried out at 60 °C using ethanol-water (80 % v/v) as solvent. Extracts were taken after 5, 10, 15, 30, 60, 120, 180, 240 and 1380 min. Antioxidant concentration in the solvent was evaluated by measuring the total antioxidant activity using the FRAP method. Extraction kinetic was modelled from the evolution of antioxidant concentration in the solvent using a diffusion model. Extracts obtained from freeze dried samples presented the highest antioxidant concentration, almost double that from hot air dried samples. Among these, the highest antioxidant concentration was found for samples dried at 100 and 40 °C. The freeze dried samples also showed the highest kinetic parameters: effective antioxidant diffusivity and mass transfer coefficient.


This study examined the concentrations of Escherichia coli in soil and water samples, and some physicochemical properties of water collected from the Karnafuly River estuary, Bangladesh during March-June 2012. Among the water parameters, temperature was in the range 26.5  to 32°C, salinity varied between 0 and 5 ppt, pH values ranged from 7.5 to 7.9 and dissolved oxygen (DO) was recorded at concentrations of 2.28 to 2.91 mg/l. The average total E. coli were 26 cells/ml in water, but the sediment contained 96.42 cells/g of E. coli. The population of E. coli was always higher in sediment than those that occurred in water among all sampling stations. The growth of E. coli were positively correlated (P < 0.01) with water temperature and negatively correlated with salinity, pH and DO. The data on water quality parameters and occurrence of E. coli indicated that water of the Karnafuly estuary is polluted and unhygienic for drinking, even impossible to use for washing purposes without any treatment.

 Key words: Karnafuly, Escherichia coli, physicochemical, estuary.


The study evaluated the effect of mineral and organic fertilizers with and without the supplementation of micronutrients on the chemical characteristics and quality of date fruits from two cultivars of date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) viz. Khalas and Khassab. Thirty date-palm trees from each of the cultivars, 6-7 years of age, were randomly selected and divided into 10 groups with 3 replicates in each group. The study was conducted in a completely randomized block design (RCBD) during the years 2002-2004 at Al-Fairoz Private Farms in Al-Batinah region, Sultanate of Oman. The fertilizers used were organic peat (80 L) either alone or with 1 kg of urea (divided into 4 & 5 equal N-doses) together with 500 g of triple super phosphate and 800 g of K2SO4 and with or without supplementation of micronutrients. The control did not include any fertilizers. The samples of date fruit were collected at "Rutab" stage (soft, ripe). Significant (P<0.05) differences were observed in the chemical characteristics and quality parameters of dates on different fertilizer applications as compared to control. The highest dry matter content was observed in both the date cultivars when mineral fertilizers (NPK, in 4-N doses) were supplemented with organic peat and micronutrients. The application of organic peat alone resulted in higher tannin and pectin contents but lower titeratable acidity (TA) in both the cultivars as compared to all other treatments. During the year 2004, both the cultivars showed lower pectin, tannin and moisture contents but higher pH values as compared to the years 2002 and 2003. Overall the application of organic peat over a period of 3 years in both cultivars increased the tannin contents, whereas the mineral fertilizers reduced it. The interactions between fertilizer application, year and stage of maturity were also significant (P<0.05) for DM, tannin and TA.


Most people, when given a choice, would choose to die at home, however, the reality is that many of us will die in hospital. How that death will be, is often a cause for debate and, for some, concern.

The Study to Understand Progress and Preferences for Outcome and Risks of Treatment (SUPPORT)1 is one of many studies that showed much was at fault with the way end-of-life care was provided in hospitals. Of the hospitalised patients in that study, 50% experienced moderate to severe pain during the last 3 days of life; fewer than half of doctors discussed cardiopulmonary resuscitation with their patients, and almost half of the do not resuscitate (DNR) orders were written within 2 days of death.

It may be that the studies referred to above were undertaken some time ago, but there is still evidence to suggest that more needs to be done. Pain and symptom management have been reported as main concerns for the dying patient and their relatives.23 Patients report psychological symptoms4 and difficulties in communication.5 Even when treatment options are discussed, often patients do not understand their options.67

It is especially heartening therefore, to see a study in this issue of …


Smartwatches are rapidly emerging to be the next generation of personal devices from the smartphone era due to their novel form factor and broad applications. However, their emergence also poses new challenges to securing user information. An important challenge is preventing unauthorized access to private information stored on the watch, for which a locking method is typically used. Due to smartwatches' limited display, the performance of locking methods offered on smartwatches may suffer from the fat-finger problem and is currently unknown. In this paper, we present the first study to evaluate different locking methods for smartwatches. We contribute to the ongoing research trend in authentication for smartwatches with a reference benchmark and interesting insights for future work.


This paper investigates how Austrian undergraduate preservice student teachers evaluate (1) the importance of educational research for teachers in general and for themselves in particular and (2) the impact of different aspects of utility value of research evidence on educational practice. In order to achieve this, a theoretical framework proposing five aspects of utility value (Rossi & Freeman, 1993; Visscher & Coe, 2002; Weiss, 1979, 1998) was transferred to the pedagogical context and served as a basis for the development of an interview guideline and of content-analytical rules for qualitative text analysis. To answer the research questions, 30 guideline-based qualitative interviews with Austrian undergraduate preservice student teachers in their second or third year of study were analyzed using various techniques of Qualitative Content Analysis, in particular, inductive category formation and deductive category assignment (Mayring, 2014). Results of the analysis suggest that the interviewed undergraduate preservice student teachers tend to primarily refer to study-orientated topics (e.g. bachelor theses) when evaluating the importance of educational research for teachers and address the conceptual and instrumental value of research evidence for educational practice. The paper concludes with a critical discussion and derives implications for further research projects.


Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is consid-ered an important candidate for the next-generation cellular networks to address the issue of exponentially growing data traffic from technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT). Efficient user pairing between multiple users is needed to enhance the capacity of uplink NOMA systems, and this paper investigates a user pairing strategy that enhances the capacities of a cell for uplink NOMA. In general, NOMA separates nodes into two equally-sized groups where half of nodes with the best channel conditions are allocated to one group, while the other half of nodes are allocated to the other group. Then, NOMA pairs each node in one group with another node in the other group. First, we investigate an efficient pairing scheme that maximizes the sum capacity for the uplink NOMA system, with an even number of nodes, i.e. when there is an equal number of cellular users in each group. An additional problem arises when there is an odd number of nodes, and the number of users in one group is thus one larger than in the other, leaving one node potentially unpaired. Instead of using regular OMA for the unpaired node, we propose an efficient adaptive user pairing strategy where the unpaired node is allowed to pair with one of the other pairs, forming a cluster of three nodes. The objective of our proposed scheme is to find the best pair of nodes to serve the unpaired node in order to increase the overall sum capacity. Moreover, the impact of perfect and imperfect successive interference cancellation (SIC) is studied on the user pairing strategy for uplink NOMA systems. Numerical results verify the effectiveness of our proposed adaptive user pairing strategy over the user pairing scheme utilizing conventional NOMA and OMA schemes.


Graphene as a nanomaterial consisting of a single layer sheets of atoms of carbon in hexagonal arrangement is making a significant impact in variety of technologies such as energy storage and chemical analysis. The significant attention paid to this thinnest nanomaterial resulted in thousands of patent applications is due to its staggering properties. Due to the planar conjugation of the sp2bonds in graphene, two-dimensional electrical conduction is highly efficient. On the contrary, the efficiency of electron exchange at the out-of-plane of the graphene sheet is small. The significant difference of the densities of electronic states at in-plane and out-of-plane of graphene sheet determines two distinct structural contributions (basal and edge plane respectively) to the behavior of all graphitic materials yielding the chemical and electrochemical anisotropy. Being the simplest building block of graphitic materials, graphene offers the possibility to study the behavior on the simplest level of structural organization. However, the major effort of the recent electrochemical studies of graphene were done using a bulk materials based on graphene flakes possessing the domination of edges of high reactivity. The planar orientation of graphene sheets with controllable exposure of basal plane is achievable via the growth by chemical vapor deposition or by epitaxial flash annealing on crystalline structures of silicon carbide. The slow growth of graphene onto crystalline support during annealing in the inert atmosphere results in a development of a high quality graphene monolayer attached to the solid insulating support. The creation of sp3-type reactive defects on the basal plane of graphite can be achieved by anodization at high anodic potentials.We developed the procedure for the real-time monitoring of epitaxial graphene anodization. The changes of electrochemical properties of graphene monolayer with anodization have been comparatively investigated by electrochemical methods. The estimation of specific capacitance in pure electrolyte and in conditions of Faradaic process has been carried out. Finally, the direct electrocatalysis of laccase (Trametes versicolor) has been used as an electrode reaction to probe the reactivities of anodized epitaxial graphene and conventional carbon materials.