Researchers, as well as decision-makers and practitioners, often wonder what becomes of the results of research in the social sciences. At present in Australia, we know very little on the subject. This article reports results from a survey of academic sociologists and criminologists about the utilization of their research. It tests an empirical model that derives its dependent and independent variables from prior studies on knowledge utilization, and defines research utilization as a six-stage cumulative process. Results indicate that while there are decreasing reported levels of research utilization across the stages by practitioners and professionals, academic sociologists and criminologists report their research is more often used conceptually. Variables that distinguished respondents who report high levels of utilization were investments in linkage and exchange mechanisms. The discussion is placed in a broader context related to measuring the impact of social research and the factors that inhibit and facilitate this process.


One day I asked Milton Friedman a question. That question was in my mind every time we met: "Could he have achieved the same status he did in America if he had lived in Russia--not only in terms of his research, but in shaping his outlook on life and in his understanding of freedom?" Having kept silent for a moment, he answered: "no." Every time I think about his answer, two different voices start to argue inside my head. One of them is emotional and selfish and is hopeful that Friedman was wrong. And if fate was to place him in Russia, he could have achieved what he had achieved in America. He could have then made the same difference or even more. In this case I, as a Russian citizen, would have by far more chances to communicate with such a marvelous person. And my country would have a unique opportunity to grow through his knowledge. Probably in such a case my country would have been a bit different. Another voice inside my head is rational and dispassionate and it frigidly acknowledges that Friedman was right. And that if he found himself in Russia, he would be lost to the country and the world and probably to himself as well. Milton Friedman's death on November 16, 2006, caused a stream of comments and memorials. Independent of who wrote them, those memoirs share respectful admiration for intellectual and personal qualifies of such a remarkable person, probably the most influential economist of the last century. "There are many Nobel Prize winners in economics," said Alan Greenspan, "but few have achieved the mythical status of Milton Friedman." Could Friedman Be a Russian Economist? Despite political or ideological views, all commentators shared a common feeling about Milton Friedman: the world lost a great economist. And, as it was noted in mostly all eulogies, the world lost a great American economist. But why American? Why couldn't Milton Friedman turn out to be some other great economist? For example, a great Russian economist? Undoubtedly, a genuine scientist does not belong to one country, but to all of mankind. In the world of academics and science, there are no national borders. But the country where a remarkable scientist, thinker, and creator lives and works can benefit from his genius like no other. This has less to do with a so-called national pride than with a hardly estimable contribution of a talented person to the development of his country through his presence in the country; his communication with his colleagues, students, or postgraduates; his appearances in the media; and his remarks on the important issues of the day. In theory, Friedman could have become a Russian economist, or at least a Russian citizen, if his parents, Sarah Ethel Landau and Jeno Saul Friedman, who were born in Beregszasz, a small mostly Jewish town in the Hungarian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that later became Berehovo in Transcarpathian Ukraine (Friedman and Friedman 1998: 19), did not emigrate to the United States at the end of the 19th century but instead turned out to be in the former Soviet Union. Of course, as we say in Russia, history does not accept the subjunctive mood. Once something has happened, it is an undeniable fact. But still, we could try to imagine Milton Friedman's alternative life in Russia. The honest answer to the question of whether it would have been possible for Friedman to have had the success he did if he had lived and worked in Russia is disappointing. In the last century in the Soviet Union and Russia, there were virtually no chances for some of the world's greatest creative minds to develop, prosper, or even to survive. Although the factors that determine who will be a genius are not written in stone, there are certain objective criteria that are necessary for a person to develop his talents: good family, quality of education, the nature of work, an intellectual circle of friends and colleagues, the ability to travel and to share knowledge with foreign colleagues, the ability to express one's opinion freely, an opportunity to think, and finally the society's general recognition of the scholar's talent and achievements. …


This article reviews various issues linked to the rise in inequality observed in a number of countries, particularly developed countries, over the past quarter century. Various sources of evidence regarding the time profile of inequality are examined and do not always fit the common view that inequality is trending upward everywhere. Overall, changes in inequality appear to be very country-specific. The same conclusion does obtain when examining the causes of these changes. There is little doubt that there are common forces affecting the distribution of income in most countries, but idiosyncratic factors have enhanced their effects in some cases and offset them in others. Country specificity also holds with regard to policies aimed at correcting inequality, even though globalization imposes constraints on some key redistribution instruments like taxation and the regulation of financial markets. International coordination and, in particular, more transparency in cross-border financial operations are needed for governments to recover some autonomy in these matters.


Optical Music Recognition (OMR) systems are an important tool for the automatic recognition of digitized music scores. However, handwritten musical scores are especially problematic for an automatic recognition. They have irregularities that go from heterogeneous illumination to variability in symbols shape and complexity inherent to music structure. These issues cause serious difficulties when one wants a robust OMR system facilitating search, retrieval and analysis operations. To transform the paper-based music scores and manuscripts into a machine-readable symbolic format several consistent algorithms are needed. In this paper a method for music symbols extraction in handwritten and printed scores is presented. This technique tries to incorporate musical rules as prior knowledge in the segmentation process in order to overcome the state of the art results.


Genetic disorders of lipoprotein metabolism can cause marked hypocholesterolaemia with low or absent low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol and apolipoprotein B (apoB) concentrations in plasma, depending on the gene involved and mode of inheritance of the condition, together with the severity of the mutation or mutations present. Hypobetalipoproteinaemia is defined as a plasma LDL cholesterol and apoB less than the 5th centile for age and sex, and when mutations in the APOB gene are inherited in a codominant fashion is known as familial hypobetalipoproteinaemia (FHBL). Abetalipoproteinaemia, which is clinically indistinguishable from homozygous FHBL, is a very rare recessive disorder caused by mutations in MTTP and characterised by the absence of apoB-containing lipoproteins in the plasma. Loss-of-function mutations in PCSK9, particularly nonsense mutations, are also associated with hypobetalipoproteinaemia, but lack any clinical features. More recently, mutations in ANGPTL3 were found to cause recessive familial combined hypolipidaemia, characterised by a reduction in all plasma lipids.

Key Concepts:

Hypobetalipoproteinaemia is defined as low levels (<5th centile) of plasma LDL cholesterol and apolipoprotein B, whereas in abetalipoproteinaemia these analytes may be undetectable.

Heterozygous FHBL is generally caused by truncations in apoB, and is associated with hepatic steatosis and a low risk of cardiovascular disease.

Homozygous FHBL and abetalipoproteinaemia result in a variable clinical phenotype and are caused by mutations in APOB and MTTP, respectively.

Loss-of-function mutations in PCSK9 are associated with low plasma LDL cholesterol concentrations and low risk of cardiovascular disease, and no clinical phenotype.

ANGPTL3 mutations cause familial combined hypolipidaemia, a newly described recessive condition characterised by reductions in all plasma lipids.

Keywords:

abetalipoproteinaemia;
angiopoietin-like protein 3;
apolipoprotein B;
combined hypolipidaemia;
familial hypobetalipoproteinaemia;
hypocholesterolaemia;
LDL cholesterol;
microsomal triglyceride transfer protein;
mutation;
proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9


Well-log correlation is a crucial step to construct cross sections in estimating structures between wells and building subsurface models. Manually correlating multiple logs can be highly subjective and labor intensive. We have developed a weighted incremental correlation method to efficiently correlate multiple well logs following a geologically optimal path. In this method, we first automatically compute an optimal path that starts with longer logs and follows geologically continuous structures. Then, we use the dynamic warping technique to sequentially correlate the logs following the path. To avoid potential error propagation with the path, we modify the dynamic warping algorithm to use all the previously correlated logs as references to correlate the current log in the path. During the sequential correlations, we compute the geologic distances between the current log and all of the reference logs. Such distances are proportional to Euclidean distances, but they increase dramatically across discontinuous structures such as faults and unconformities that separate the current log from the reference logs. We also compute correlation confidences to provide quantitative quality control of the correlation results. We use the geologic distances and correlation confidences to weight the references in correlating the current log. By using this weighted incremental correlation method, each log is optimally correlated with all the logs that are geologically closer and are ordered with higher priorities in the path. Hundreds of well logs from the Teapot Dome survey demonstrate the efficiency and robustness of the method.


This paper presents a personal-computer-controlled system, assembled mainly with IEEE 488 general purpose instruments and aimed at the measurement of magnetic field intensity. The main sensor element in the system is a magnetoresistive field sensor which includes four permalloy strips connected in a Wheatstone bridge configuration. The temperature dependence of this sensor can vary almost 25% in the experimental operating temperature range (20/spl deg/C-100/spl deg/C). In order to overcome this problem, a two-terminal integrated circuit temperature transducer is connected to the system, and its temperature information is used to correct the temperature drift error of the magnetic sensor. Artificial neural networks are used for data reduction and final results show an improvement in the system's accuracy from 20% to 2%.


In New Zealand, scarcely a week goes by without news of workers who, due to the insolvency
of their employer, have lost their jobs and are owed sometimes thousands of dollars for unpaid
wages, holiday pay, redundancy payments or other bonuses. The focus of this article is the
mechanisms that exist in New Zealand law to ensure that such workers receive these unpaid
entitlements and the effectiveness of such mechanisms. The principal mechanisms discussed
are the treatment of unpaid employee entitlements as a preferential claim in the liquidation of
an insolvent company and the general powers in the Companies Act 1993 (NZ), which are
generally exercised by liquidators, to bring personal actions against directors and others for
misconduct on behalf of the creditors generally. The article concludes that New Zealand
workers are less protected than their counterparts in comparative jurisdictions, but argues that
any solution is unlikely to be found in insolvency law.


Sightability models are binary logistic-regression models used to estimate and adjust for visibility bias in wildlife-population surveys. Like many models in wildlife and ecology, sightability models are typically developed from small observational datasets with many candidate predictors. Aggressive model-selection methods are often employed to choose a best model for prediction and effect estimation, despite evidence that such methods can lead to overfitting (i.e., selected models may describe random error or noise rather than true predictor–response curves) and poor predictive ability. We used moose (Alces alces) sightability data from northeastern Minnesota (2005–2007) as a case study to illustrate an alternative approach, which we refer to as degrees-of-freedom (df) spending: sample-size guidelines are used to determine an acceptable level of model complexity and then a pre-specified model is fit to the data and used for inference. For comparison, we also constructed sightability models using Akaike's Information Criterion (AIC) step-down procedures and model averaging (based on a small set of models developed using df-spending guidelines). We used bootstrap procedures to mimic the process of model fitting and prediction, and to compute an index of overfitting, expected predictive accuracy, and model-selection uncertainty. The index of overfitting increased 13% when the number of candidate predictors was increased from three to eight and a best model was selected using step-down procedures. Likewise, model-selection uncertainty increased when the number of candidate predictors increased. Model averaging (based on R = 30 models with 1–3 predictors) effectively shrunk regression coefficients toward zero and produced similar estimates of precision to our 3-df pre-specified model. As such, model averaging may help to guard against overfitting when too many predictors are considered (relative to available sample size). The set of candidate models will influence the extent to which coefficients are shrunk toward zero, which has implications for how one might apply model averaging to problems traditionally approached using variable-selection methods. We often recommend the df-spending approach in our consulting work because it is easy to implement and it naturally forces investigators to think carefully about their models and predictors. Nonetheless, similar concepts should apply whether one is fitting 1 model or using multi-model inference. For example, model-building decisions should consider the effective sample size, and potential predictors should be screened (without looking at their relationship to the response) for missing data, narrow distributions, collinearity, potentially overly influential observations, and measurement errors (e.g., via logical error checks). © 2011 The Wildlife Society.


Namibia is still characterised by deep socio-economic inequalities, as economic structures have remained largely intact after independence. Poverty is still widespread and unemployment has remained high with women and youth being particularly affected. In 2002, the Namibian government's Tax Commission proposed a universal cash grant as the most effective way to fight poverty and to reduce inequality. In 2004, the Basic Income Grant (BIG) Coalition was formed consisting of churches, trade unions and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in support of the proposed grant. It implemented a pilot project to practically demonstrate the effects of the grant. The chosen location was the village of Otjivero where each inhabitant received a monthly cash grant of N$100 (US$9)beginning in January 2008. A research team closely monitored developments and found that within one year the rates of poverty, child malnutrition and school drop-outs had fallen significantly. Economic activities increased, school results and residents' health status improved while the crime rate and women's economic dependency on men were reduced. Despite these results, the Namibian government did not implement the BIG and the coalition failed to ignite a mass campaign. The country's largest trade union federation did not play an active role and its leadership withdrew from the coalition despite support for the BIG among union members. The introduction of a BIG in Namibia will depend on the ability to the BIG coalition to create pressure 'from below'. Trade unions and youth organisations in particular will have to mobilise their membership and present the demand for the BIG as a form of economic justice. In terms of financial and economic resources, Namibia could easily afford a national BIG and its introduction is a question of political will.


Background: The treatment of chronic anal fissure has changed greatly during the past two decades with ongoing research directed at lowering the internal anal sphincter tone and avoiding the risk of fecal continence disturbance. Glycerin trinitrate, topical calcium channel blockers and anal dilators and botulinum toxin injection alone are all known to be able to lower the internal anal sphincter tone but results have been disappointing in curing chronic anal fissure, often marginally better than to placebo. The surgical treatment in the form of lateral internal sphincterotomy is the gold standard for chronic anal fissure. Aims & Objective: The aim of this prospective study was to assess the efficacy of medical treatment in form of topical calcium channel blocker and surgery in the management of chronic anal fissure. The objective is to compare the efficacy with regard to complete healing, recurrence, incontinence and other complications after treatment with topical calcium channel blocker and lateral anal sphincterotomy. Material and Methods: From October 2010 to October 2012, 50 patients with typical chronic anal fissure completed the study. 25 patients were initially treated with topical calcium channel blocker for 8 weeks and rests 25 were treated with lateral anal sphincterotomy. During the follow-up healing rates, symptoms, incontinence scores, and therapy adverse effects were recorded. Results: Overall healing rates were 60% after 8 weeks therapy with topical calcium channel blocker. Whereas overall healing after lateral internal sphincterotomy group was 88% with no recurrence. Conclusion: Lateral internal sphincterotomy is far more effective than medical treatment, with significantly increased healing rates while avoiding risk of incontinence.


A simple strategy for studying electrochemical properties of proteins or peptides using unmodified carbon paste electrodes was developed by cross-linking dopamine (DA) with BSA as a test protein. The BSA-5-CysDA adducts produced were evaluated by cyclic voltammetry, spectrofluorometry and first-derivative spectrophotometry in the visible range. An anodic peak was observed after protein isolation, not found with BSA samples only. This approach allow to overlap the sluggish kinetics of electron transfer exhibited by proteins with no metallic prosthetic groups near the electrode surface, providing thermodynamic and conformational studies by electrochemical techniques. A marked increased in fluorescence signal at 350 nm emission together with the appearance of an absorption signal at 370 nm have also arisen from the protein adducts. In this sense the covalent linkage between BSA with dopamine disclosed it as a dual candidate for both electrochemical and spectroscopic studies of proteins either in solution or immobilized on electrode surfaces.  2014 Trade Science Inc. INDIA


Several features that allow flow microreactors contribute to green and sustainable chemical synthesis are presented: (1) For extremely fast reactions, kinetics often cannot be used because of the lack of homogeneity of the reaction environment when they are conducted in batch macroreactors. Better controllability, by virtue of fast mixing based on short diffusion paths in microreactors, however, leads to a higher selectivity of the products, based on kinetics considerations. Therefore, less waste is produced. (2) Reactions involving highly unstable intermediates usually require very low temperatures when they are conducted in macrobatch reactors. By virtue of short residence times, flow microreactors enable performing such reactions at ambient temperatures, avoiding cryogenic conditions and minimizing the energy required for cooling. (3) By virtue of the precise residence time control, flow microreactors allow to avoid the use of auxiliary substances such as protecting groups, enabling highly atom- and step-economical straightforward syntheses. The development of several test plants based on microreaction technology has proved that flow microreactor synthesis can be applied to the green and sustainable production of chemical substances on industrial scales. (4) Microreactor technology enables on-demand and on-site synthesis, which leads to less energy for transportation and easy recycling of substances.


Patients with hypertensive disease and healthy individuals were examined. The examination showed the expediency of using dynamic and static physical exercises. The level of information concerning the reflex and energetic components of hemodynamic reactions to physical exercise grows in such cases.


This thesis describes the development of a compact and modularised indirect time of flight range imaging camera. These cameras commonly use the Amplitude Modulated Continuous Wave (AMCW) technique. For this technique, an entire scene is illuminated with light modulated at a high frequency. An image sensor is also modulated and the phase shift introduced between the two modulation signals, due to the transit time of the light reflecting off objects in the scene and returning to the camera, is used to measure the distance.  The system constructed for this thesis is controlled by a Cyclone III FPGA and is capable of producing full field of view range images in real time with no additional computational resources. A PMD19K-2 sensor is used as the modulatable image sensor, and is capable of modulation frequencies up to 40 MHz.  One significant issue identified with this range imaging technology is that the precision of the range measurements are often dependent on the properties of the object being measured. The dynamic range of the camera is therefore very important when imaging high contrast scenes. Variable Frame Rate Imaging is a novel technique that is developed as part of this thesis and is shown to have promise for addressing this issue. Traditional theory for indirect time of flight cameras is expanded to describe this technique and is experimentally verified. A comparison is made between this technique and traditional High Dynamic Range Imaging. Furthermore, this technique is extended to provide a constant precision measurement of a scene, regardless of the properties of the objects in the scene.  It is shown that the replacement of the standard phase detection algorithm with a different algorithm can both reduce the linearity error in the phase measurements caused by harmonics in the correlation waveform and ameliorate axial motion error caused by relative motion of the camera and the object being measured. The new algorithm requires a trivial increase in computational power over the standard algorithm and can be implemented without any significant changes to the standard hardware used in indirect time of flight cameras.  Finally, the complete system is evaluated in a number of real world scenarios. Applications in both 3D modelling and mobile robotics are demonstrated and tests are performed for a variety of scenarios including dynamic scenes using a Pioneer 2 robot.


Three Lactobacillus plantarum and seven Lactobacillus reuteri strains were studied by using restriction endonuclease analysis (REA) combined with principal-component analysis (PCA) and soft independent modeling of class analogy (SIMCA). Chromosomal DNAs from the strains were extracted and cleaved with restriction enzymes, and the DNA fragments were separated according to size by agarose gel electrophoresis. Band patterns were read by using a laser densitometer. The procedure to obtain reproducible digestion patterns with a suitable number of DNA fragments was optimized. Asp 718, ClaI and EcoRI were the most suitable of the 17 restriction enzymes tested, each giving 30 to 50 DNA fragments down to a molecular weight of 4.2 × 106. The digestion patterns of all three enzymes, which gave a data set for 10 strains and 80 variables, were used for classification by PCA and SIMCA. All strains were clearly separated, and the separation within each species was in general accordance with data on DNA-DNA homology found in the literature. A class model was created for L. reuteri 1073, 1068, 1063, 1048, and 1044. Closest to this model was L. reuteri DSM 20016T (T = type strain), followed by L. reuteri DSM 20015; the most distant strains were the L. plantarum strains. We concluded that restriction endonuclease analysis, combined with PCA and SIMCA, can be used for the classification of Lactobacillus spp.


********** In the ecumenical world it is a new historical moment for dialogue among the churches in the matter of peace. For many years discussion between the Historic Peace Churches and other churches (and often between Christian individuals) was structured around the question of the compatibility or complementarity of inherited "positions" or traditions--Christian pacifist understandings and just-war ethics. It was assumed that church reconciliation would involve getting that question resolved. Little progress was made. When pacifist understanding was dismissed as laudable but not possible, there was not even discussion. The very exigencies of our present situation in a violent world bring us to a new place. These, along with the greater awareness of the myriad and interwoven forms that violence takes (crude and less crude; military and structural; public, personal, and environmental), have had their effect upon those gathered in the dialogical fellowship of the ecumenical movement. Out of common concerns as church people, from love of God and of each other, and with the help of the Holy Spirit, many Christians now find themselves drawn into common hope and prayer for peace and efforts to overcome violence. It would seem that we have with greater seriousness--more poignantly and existentially, more gratefully perhaps--appropriated the gospel conviction that conciliar churches could already affirm together at the First Assembly of the World Council of Churches in 1948: "Peace is the Will of God." As a result, in ecumenical circles, energy for pursuing the earlier debate in the old way has dissipated. The old debate no longer compels interest. It is not that ethicists, both Christian and otherwise, have ceased to draw upon just-war theory; the many and varied discussions with very particular compelling focus following September 11, 2001, strongly attest otherwise. (1) General Christian reflection--ethical, biblical, and theological, on peace and peacemaking, conflict and resistance, war and violence--continues as well. However, in ecumenical circles there is a new and common focus: a compelling need to find our way in the world. The discussion is taken up as theological reflection and exchange rather than debate or dismissal. Common faith now seeks common understanding. The three essays that follow, on the topic of "New Starting Points in Ecumenical Peace Dialogue," were written by members of Historic Peace Churches--a Quaker, a Mennonite, and a member of the Church of the Brethren--for the annual meeting of the North American Academy of Ecumenists in September, 1999, held at Messiah College in Grantham, PA. The authors in their various ways acknowledge as the context for their writing the changed environment that we have noted. Each of their essays, considered individually, is an effective entry point into Christian peace theologizing. Together, in ways truly diverse and complementary (the essays being so different in style and content), they provide a deeply informative, complex point of entry into a developed stream of Christian thinking that is well worth learning to navigate. The essay by Ann Riggs focuses on the fundamental role that an understanding of the transformative power of God's in-breaking reign--and its invitation to participation--plays in Quaker peace thought. It would be more accurate to say that she expressively evokes and draws us into that understanding. Her words brought to this writer's mind the work of Catholic ethicist Lisa Sowle Cahill. In Love Your Enemies (2) Cahill has shown that Christian pacifist and just-war theory--both present in the heritage of Christian thought--are of a disparate character, their anatomies quite different. Cahill observed that just-war theory is grounded in "the practice of just and ordered political life," that it is "also characteristically theory-oriented toward defining and refining criteria by analysis and argument," that its thinking is "theoretical and rule-making. …


This experiment was conducted to test possible prebiotic characteristics of ten carbohydrate/ fibrous feedstuffs fed in broiler diets. The following criteria were tested: (a) resistance to gastric acidity, hydrolysis by digestive enzymes, (b) fermentation by intestinal microflora. In the first part of the experiment, the test feedstuffs were pre-digested in a 3-step pepsin-pancreatin in vitro digestion to establish resistance to gastric acidity and hydrolysis by digestive enzymes of the foregut. In the subsequent study, the degree of fermentation by microflora of the hindgut was measured in vitro using the cumulative gas production technique. Incubations were carried out using caecal inoculum from specially raised broiler birds fed diets devoid of copper and antibiotics at 4, 6 and 8 weeks of age and gas production was measured as an indicator of the kinetics of fermentation. Incubations were carried out until maximum gas production was achieved for all substrates. Fermentation parameters such as pH, ammonia of fermentation and organic matter loss were measured. Most of the test feedstuffs showed resistance to gastric acidity and hydrolysis by digestive enzymes as over 60 % of the test samples were recovered in residue post-enzymatic digestion. Four carbohydrates; cassava starch, cassava starch residue, cassava root sieviette and sweet potato flour showed potentials for fermentation by caecal inoculum of broiler birds at different ages. Significant (p < 0.05) differences were recorded for gas production, pH and organic matter loss for all substrates at different ages, however significant (p < 0.05) differences in ammonia production were only observed in the study at 8 weeks. This study has established that cassava starch, cassava root sieviette, cassava starch residue and sweet potato flour are able to resist hydrolysis by enzymes in the gastrointestinal tract of broiler birds but are fermentable in the caecum. Further studies to establish that these feedstuffs can be used to manipulate intestinal microflora populations in vivo, to satisfy their use as prebiotics, are in progress.


A scenario of an apparel industry without paper fashion drawings which become patterns and then cut and sewn fabric to end up to a prototype is too optimistic. A future scenario of a fashion designer comfortable enough with 3D technology to create from the beginning that initial fashion drawing in a three-dimensional space making quick decisions, trying out different fabrics, colors and contrasts, communicating his/her ideas with the pattern maker and the entire development team in true to life 3D and within hours instead of days or weeks, sounds exciting but for some, science fiction. Threedimensional (3D) technology - while well established in many other industrial sectors like automotive, aerospace, architecture and industrial design, has only just started to open up a whole range of new opportunities for apparel designers.
The paper will discuss the process of 3D simulation technology enhanced by high quality visualization of data and its capability to ensure a massive competitiveness in the market. Secondly, it will underline the most frequent problems & challenges that occur in the process chain when various partners in the production of textiles and apparel are working together. Finally, it will offer a perspective of how the Virtual Prototyping Technology will make the global textile and apparel industry change to a level where designs will be visualized on a computer and various scenarios modeled without even having to produce a physical prototype. This state-of-the-art 3D technology has been described as transformative and "disruptive" comparing to the process of the way apparel companies develop their fashion products today. It provides the benefit of virtual sampling not only for quick testing of design ideas, but also reducing process steps and having more visibility. The so called "digital asset" can be used for other purpose such as merchandising or marketing.


Testing the optical properties of complementaIy metal oxide (CMOS) imagers requires a light source. The light source must produce stable uniform light with calibrated wavelength and intensity. Available commercial light source units are costly and often unalterable to a custom test setup. The proposed light source is designed to be affordable and adaptable while maintaining the necessary optical quality. The design consists of an array of light emitting diodes (LED), an infrared (IR) cut-offfilter, and holographic diffusers-all of which are encased in an anodized aluminium housing. Initial experimental results have shown that the light source has lasting stability and a light uniformity above 90 percent. Applications for this light source include the experimentation and testing of imagers, photo cells, and other optoelectronic devices.


Aim: This study investigated the use of stable δ13C and δ18O isotopes in the sagittal otolith carbonate of narrow-barred Spanish mackerel, Scomberomorus commerson, as indicators of population structure across Australia.

Location: Samples were collected from 25 locations extending from the lower west coast of Western Australia (30°), across northern Australian waters, and to the east coast of Australia (18°) covering a coastline length of approximately 9500 km, including samples from Indonesia.

Methods: The stable δ13C and δ18O isotopes in the sagittal otolith carbonate of S. commerson were analysed using standard mass spectrometric techniques. The isotope ratios across northern Australian subregions were subjected to an agglomerative hierarchical cluster analysis to define subregions. Isotope ratios within each of the subregions were compared to assess population structure across Australia.

Results: Cluster analysis separated samples into four subregions: central Western Australia, north Western Australia, northern Australia and the Gulf of Carpentaria and eastern Australia. Isotope signatures for fish from a number of sampling sites from across Australia and Indonesia were significantly different, indicating population separation. No significant differences were found in otolith isotope ratios between sampling times (no temporal variation).

Main conclusions: Significant differences in the isotopic signatures of S. commerson demonstrate that there is unlikely to be any substantial movement of fish among these spatially discrete adult assemblages. The lack of temporal variation among otolith isotope ratios indicates that S. commerson populations do not undergo longshore spatial shifts in distribution during their life history. The temporal persistence of spatially explicit stable isotopic signatures indicates that, at these spatial scales, the population units sampled comprise functionally distinct management units or separate 'stocks' for many of the purposes of fisheries management. The spatial subdivision evident among populations of S. commerson across northern and western Australia indicates that it may be advantageous to consider S. commerson population dynamics and fisheries management from a metapopulation perspective (at least at the regional level).


We present the results of a research analysing the conditions that influence the successful research career of academic women in the field of the social sciences. In our research we used in-depth interview in a sample of academics pertaining to Catalan public universities, all of them leaders of research groups recognized by the Generalitat de Catalunya. The interviews were structured according to the following topics: individual conditions for academic success, group-type conditions and institutional factors. The results validated the theoretical categories and contributed to their enrichment, while —nevertheless— pointing the existence of a number of subcategories that can be studied in depth in future research.Among the individual factors for success in academic careers participants mentioned: «the passion for knowing», the  sociocultural factors, the research periods abroad, the perseverance and tenacity, the support of family, respect of biological time and the relationship with a mentor. Among the factors linked to the group, we can highlight: the balance between individual and group work, the research experience exchange between team members, participation in competitive team projects and a leadership style based on mediation and delegation. Finally, the following institutional factors were also highlighted: the existence of other research groups with which they compete, the convergence between research and teaching activities, the coordination of research project and financial support from national and European bodies.


In this work, we introduce an open-source Julia project, express, an extensible, high-throughput, high-level workflow framework that aims to automate ab initio calculations for the materials science community. Express is shipped with well-tested workflow templates, including structure optimization, equation of state (EOS) fitting, phonon spectrum (lattice dynamics) calculation, and thermodynamic property calculation in the framework of the quasi-harmonic approximation (QHA). It is designed to be highly modularized so that its components can be reused across various occasions, and customized workflows can be built on top of that. Users can also track the status of workflows in real-time, and rerun failed jobs thanks to the data lineage feature express provides. Two working examples, i.e., all workflows applied to lime and akimotoite, are also presented in the code and this paper.


Heterogeneous system-on-chips (SoC) that include both general-purpose processors and field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) are emerging as very promising platforms to develop modern cyber-physical systems, combining the typical flexibility enabled by software with the speedup achievable by custom hardware accelerators. Furthermore, the dynamic partial reconfiguration (DPR) capabilities of modern FPGAs make such platforms even more attractive, offering the possibility of virtualizing the FPGA area to support several hardware accelerators in time sharing. However, heterogeneous platforms originate considerable challenges in the design and development process of applications, especially if timing and energy constraints are concerned. The FRED framework has been recently proposed to support the development of real-time applications upon such platforms, using a static slotted-based partitioning of the FPGA area to ensure predictable delays when managing custom hardware accelerators by DPR. This paper addresses the problem of designing a suitable FPGA partitioning to support the execution of a real-time application within the FRED framework. The problem is formulated as a mixed-integer linear program that is in charge of (i) designing the size of the slots (in terms of FPGA resources), (ii) allocating hardware tasks to the slots, and (iii) selecting which hardware tasks must be statically allocated to the FPGA, while ensuring bounded worst-case response times on the tasks.


A tool, called HEXPERT, is presented for building expert systems. HEXPERT has been developed by integrating several techniques and ideas known to relax the difficulty of development of expert systems and to enhance their performance. It provides an environment where the knowledge base is formulated from several subknowledge bases each of which is represented using a object-oriented programming technology and processed in any of three inferring directions, the forward, the backward, and the mixed direction. It also provides two browsers. To transfer data between expert systems and database management systems, HEXPERT can communicate to the INGRES database management system.<<ETX>>


According to the current paradigm, galaxies initially form as disc galaxies at the centres of their own dark matter haloes. During their subsequent evolution, they may undergo a transformation to a red, early-type galaxy, thus giving rise to the build-up of the red sequence. Two important, outstanding questions are (i) which transformation mechanisms are most important and (ii) in what environment do they occur. In this paper, we study the impact of transformation mechanisms that operate only on satellite galaxies, such as strangulation, ram-pressure stripping and galaxy harassment. Using a large galaxy group catalogue constructed from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we compare the colours and concentrations of satellites galaxies to those of central galaxies of the same stellar mass, adopting the hypothesis that the latter are the progenitors of the former. On average, satellite galaxies are redder and more concentrated than central galaxies of the same stellar mass, indicating that satellite-specific transformation processes do indeed operate. Central-satellite pairs that are matched in both stellar mass and colour, however, show no average concentration difference, indicating that the transformation mechanisms operating on satellites affect colour more than morphology. We also find that the colour and concentration differences of matched central-satellite pairs are completely independent of the mass of the host halo (not to be confused with the subhalo) of the satellite galaxy, indicating that satellite-specific transformation mechanisms are equally efficient in host haloes of all masses. This strongly rules against mechanisms that are thought to operate only in very massive haloes, such as ram-pressure stripping or harassment. Instead, we argue that strangulation is the main transformation mechanism for satellite galaxies. Finally, we determine the relative importance of satellite quenching for the build-up of the red sequence. We find that roughly 70 per cent of red-sequence satellite galaxies with M(*) similar to 10(9) h(-2) M(circle dot) had their star formation quenched as satellites. This drops rapidly with increasing stellar mass, reaching virtually zero at M* similar to 10(11)h(-2)M(circle dot). Therefore, a very significant fraction of red satellite galaxies were already quenched before they became a satellite.


The LIGO/Virgo collaboration has by now observed or constrained the gravitational merger rates of different classes of compact objects. We consider the possibility that the bulk of these mergers are primordial black hole (PBH) mergers of PBHs formed during the QCD epoch making up the entirety of the dark matter. Having shown in a companion paper that mergers due to the initial binary population formed in the early Universe are likely negligible, we compute current merger rates in PBH clusters in which the typical PBH resides. We consider two scenarios: (i) the PBH mass function dictated by the QCD equation of state and (ii) the PBH mass function dictated by the existence of a peak in the inflationary perturbation spectrum. In the first scenario, which is essentially parameter free, we reproduce very well the merger rates for heavy BHs, the merger rate of mass-asymmetric BHs such as GW190814, a recently discovered merger of a 23$M_{\odot}$ black hole with a $2.6M_{\odot}$ object, and can naturally explain why LIGO/Virgo has not yet observed mergers of two light PBHs from the dominant $\sim 1\,M_{\odot}$ PBH population. In the second scenario, which has some parameter freedom, we match well the observed rate of heavy PBHs, but can currently not explain the rate for mass-asymmetric events. In either case it is tantalizing that in both scenarios PBH merger rates made with a minimum of assumptions match most LIGO/Virgo observed rates very well.


In recent years, there has been tremendous interest in trying to implement the power amplifier in CMOS, due to its cost and integration benefits. Most of the high power (watt-level) CMOS PAs reported to date have not exhibited sufficient linearity required for next generation wireless standards. In this paper, we report a single-chip linear CMOS PA with sufficient power and linearity for emerging OFDM-based 4G WiMAX applications. This 90 nm 2.4 GHz CMOS linear power amplifier uses a two-stage transformer-based power combiner and produces a saturated output power of 30.1 dBm with 33% PAE and 28 dB small-signal gain. A novel bypass network is introduced to ensure stability without sacrificing gain. The choice of optimal biasing and capacitive compensation produces very flat AM-AM and AM-PM response up to high power. The PA has been tested with OFDM modulated signal and produces EVM better than -25 dB at 22.7 dBm average power. Graceful power back-off is demonstrated through turning off one of the stages, allowing low-power operation with enhanced efficiency.


In 1996, a ban on the use of US Department of Health and Human Services funds for research on the creation of human embryos and research that involved the injury or destruction of human embryos was signed into law. This ban was partially reversed in 2000 when the National Institutes of Health announced it would fund selective research on human pluripotent stem cells. Given the potential benefits to society, research using human embryos is an issue that deserves additional consideration. The American Academy of Pediatrics believes that, under certain conditions, research using human embryos and pluripotent stem cells is of sufficient scientific importance that the National Institutes of Health should fund it and that federal oversight is morally preferable to the currently unregulated private sector approach.


The ubichip is a bio-inspired reconfigurable circuit developed in the framework of the European project Perplexus. The ubichip offers special reconfigurability capabilities, being the dynamic routing one of them. This paper describes how to exploit the dynamic routing capabilities of the ubichip in order to implement synaptogenetic neural networks. We present two techniques for dynamically generating the network topology, we describe their implementation in the ubichip, and we analyse the resulting topology. This work constitutes a first step toward neural circuits exhibiting more realistic neural plasticity features.


The purpose of this article is to describe the concept of knowledge calibration within the context of knowledge management. Knowledge calibration is a concept borrowed from the psychology of decision making. It refers to the correspondence between knowledge accuracy and the confidence with which knowledge is held. Calibration is a potentially important concept for knowledge management because it describes one of the subtle errors that can lead to poor decisions. Where the correspondence between the accuracy of one's knowledge and the confidence in that knowledge is high, decisions are described as well calibrated; but poor correspondence implies miscalibrated decisions. Since one concern of the field of knowledge management is the best use of knowledge for decision-making purposes, this topic is relevant.


Democratisation as a historical process began in the 19th century and is continuing in the 21st. As one aspect of this, donor countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) are promoting democratic standards around the globe. Democracy promotion now constitutes a central part of development cooperation between donor and partner countries. A number of scholars, however, argue that the current practice of democracy promotion is inherently flawed. By promoting democracy as a culturally invariant political order, donor countries are glossing over significant cultural differences in other countries and this hampers the successful and effective promotion of democratic institutions. Yet, how cultural differences affect the promotion of democracy is still not sufficiently understood. This Discussion Paper is part of the larger research project "What is Democracy's Value? The Influence of Values on the Effectiveness of Democracy Promotion", which aims at understanding how societal values and attitudes influence the effectiveness of international democracy promotion in African countries. The project looks at how social values and political attitudes mediate the promotion of democracy in two specific realms: attempts by heads of state to circumvent presidential term limits; and reforms to legislation in the realm of family law and LGBTI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, Intersex) rights. This Discussion Paper focuses on two cases situated in Malawi: the attempt of former president Bakili Muluzi to alter presidential term limits in Malawi in 2002; and the reform of Malawi's family and marriage law in 2015. In both cases, donors engaged in democracy promotion in different ways and to different degrees. In the former case, donor countries and organisations warned the Muluzi government to heed the democratic process and thereby seconded popular attitudes. In the latter, donor countries and organisations played an important role in coordinating and mobilising domestic actors towards the reform of Malawi's family and marriage law. Both cases are analysed using in-depth process tracing investigating how donors took part in the constellations of actors engaged in the reform of either the term limit or the family law. The results of the analysis are fourfold: First, although the supply of organisational resources to domestic actors played an important role in both cases, this was not in itself sufficient to guarantee the success of democracy promotion. Rather the coordination of partner organisations played a crucial role in rendering democracy promotion effective. Second, popular mass attitudes played a crucial role in determining the outcome of the two reform processes analysed here. Third, democracy promotion involving the employment of conditionality instruments was effective when the values of the donors matched those of domestic audiences. Finally, when donors were held in esteem in Malawi this aided the effectiveness of democracy promotion by means of public statements and other appropriateness-focused instruments. However, donor esteem did not trump popular attitudes which emphasises that the effectiveness of democracy promotion is sensitive to the specific issue it addresses. These findings prompt a number of recommendations for donors wishing to promote democracy. First, donors need to assess the space available for intervention on an issue-by-issue basis. Values and attitudes in partner countries cannot simply be generalised across issues but are uniquely linked to certain social and political issues. Where attitudes and values in partner countries do not match the goals of donors, it is necessary for donors to support an open discourse. If, in turn, local attitudes and values do favour donors' goals, domestic civil society actors in partner countries are still in need of support from donors for the purpose of mobilisation and coordination. Furthermore, interventions making use of conditionality seem to necessitate a concurrence of attitudes and values between donor and partner countries.


We measured the interference of carbonyl compounds, drugs, and other substances in human serum on the determination of creatinine by the two-point, fixed-time kinetic modification of the Jaffé reaction as well as by four enzymatic methods. We added known concentrations of the interfering substances to a solution of creatinine in water. For bilirubin, we used both pooled normal sera with added bilirubin and icteric patient sera. The magnitude of interferences varies widely from method to method. Carbonyl compounds, dopamine, cephalosporines, and bilirubin interfere with the Jaffé reaction. Bilirubin, creatine, dopamine, ascorbic acid, and sarcosine interfere with the enzymatic methods. We conclude that the elimination of interferences in the determination of creatinine has still not been achieved.


We formulate the problem of salient object detection in images as an automatic labeling problem on the vertices of a weighted graph. The seed (labeled) nodes are first detected using Markov random walks performed on two different graphs that represent the image. While the global properties of the image are computed from the random walk on a complete graph, the local properties are computed from a sparse k-regular graph. The most salient node is selected as the one which is globally most isolated but falls on a locally compact object. A few background nodes and salient nodes are further identified based upon the random walk based hitting time to the most salient node. The salient nodes and the background nodes will constitute the labeled nodes. A new graph representation of the image that represents the saliency between nodes more accurately, the "pop-out graph" model, is computed further based upon the knowledge of the labeled salient and background nodes. A semisupervised learning technique is used to determine the labels of the unlabeled nodes by optimizing a smoothness objective label function on the newly created "pop-out graph" model along with some weighted soft constraints on the labeled nodes.


One of the main virulence factors produced by Bordetella pertussis is pertussis toxin (PTx) which, in its inactivated form, is the major component of all marketed acellular pertussis vaccines. PTx ADP ribosylates Gαi proteins, thereby affecting the inhibition of adenylate cyclases and resulting in the accumulation of cAMP. Apart from this classical model, PTx also activates some receptors and can affect various ADP ribosylation- and adenylate cyclase-independent signalling pathways. Due to its potent ADP-ribosylation properties, PTx has been used in many research areas. Initially the research primarily focussed on the in vivo effects of the toxin, including histamine sensitization, insulin secretion and leukocytosis. Nowadays, PTx is also used in toxicology research, cell signalling, research involving the blood–brain barrier, and testing of neutralizing antibodies. However, the most important area of use is testing of acellular pertussis vaccines for the presence of residual PTx. In vivo models and in vitro assays for PTx often reflect one of the toxin's properties or details of its mechanism. Here, the established and novel in vivo and in vitro methods used to evaluate PTx are reviewed, their mechanisms, characteristics and limitations are described, and their application for regulatory and research purposes are considered.


Atmospheric methane mixing ratio rose by 15 ppbv between 2019 and 2020, the fastest growth rate on record. We conduct a global inverse analysis of 2019–2020 Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite observations of atmospheric methane to analyze the combination of sources and sinks driving this surge. The imbalance between sources and sinks of atmospheric methane increased by 31 Tg a−1 from 2019 to 2020, representing a 36 Tg a−1 forcing (direct changes in methane emissions and OH concentrations) on the methane budget away from steady state. 86% of the forcing in the base inversion is from increasing emissions (82 ± 18% in the nine-member inversion ensemble), and only 14% is from decrease in tropospheric OH. Half of the increase in emissions is from Africa (15 Tg a−1) and appears to be driven by wetland inundation. There is also a large relative increase in emissions from Canada and Alaska (4.8 Tg a−1, 24%) that could be driven by temperature sensitivity of boreal wetland emissions.


sampling. Even where culture is possible its efficiency may be low. Estimates range from 40 to 90 O,.4 We have recently applied the enzyme immunosorbent assay (Elisa) technique to the detection of antibodies in gonorrhoea. The test we have developed uses an extract of outer membrane proteins from Neisseria goniorrhoeae as antigen and is sufficiently sensitive to allow the patient's serum to be tested routinely at a dilution of 1/1000. Details will be published elsewhere. The important finding from the point of view of screening is that appreciable antibody titres could be detected in 50% of patients within a few days of infection and in a similar proportion of asymptomatic carriers, both male and female. Moreover, antibody levels were not affected by a past history of gonorrhoea unless there had been an attack within the previous 12 weeks. In the control populations used 160(1 of men and 11 of women had antibody levels above the diagnostic threshold chosen, but the frequency distributions suggest that some of the 'false-positives' may have been real. In patients with systemic gonococcal infection antibody levels were extremely high and the test could prove useful in the diagnosis of esoteric manifestations. ALAN A GLYNN CATHERINE ISON


The objective of the present study was to investigate the natural isotopes in soil of Salah Aldeen Governorate, 200 km north Baghdad, Iraq and the possible contamination from 137Cs and depleted uranium (DU). High-resolution gamma spectrometric system with a relative efficiency of 50% was employed for the measurement of 232Th, 226Ra, 40K, and 137Cs activity in the soil samples. The ratio 235U/238U was calculated to indicate the presence of DU and possible contamination. In general, all values of the natural isotopes are within the range of normal expectation found in soils. Activity concentration of 40K exhibited higher values in the range 200 to 400 Bq/kg although these values seem lower than values reported in soils of other countries. Although the magnitudes of 137Cs concentration were low as compared with natural isotopes, the range value was very wide. Based on 235U/238U ratio, it is evident that the investigated soil samples were none contaminated with depleted uranium.


Objective: Analysis was done to assess the implications of total radiation treatment duration towards locally advanced cervical cancer. Methods: A comparative study was conducted in CNCI, Kolkata. A total of 38 patients were studied with interdigited brachyttherapy during the course of conventional teleradiotherapy and they were compared to a total of 39 patients with conventional sequential teletherapy and brachytherapy. Results: In the experimental arm all the patients had complete response to treatment whereas, 24 patients (85.7%) in the conventional arm had complete response [P = 0.08]. At the last follow up 28 patients (73.68%) in the study arm and 17 patients (43.58%) in the control arm were free of disease. The failure rate in the conventional control arm was significantly higher [P = 0.035]. Test of proportion derived from data also showed that the proportion of patients with no evidence of disease at the time of last follow-up was significantly higher in the study arm compared to the control arm [P < 0.05] and the proportion of patients with persistent disease was significantly less in the stuwdy arm compared to the control arm [P < 0.05]. The probability of disease-free survival in percentage according to the curve at the time of median follow-up was approximately 70% for study arm and 60% for control arm [log-rank test, P = 0.2463]. Conclusion: we should hence minimize treatment time and avoid any planned or unplanned interruptions or delays by timely integration of external beam and intra-cavitary irradiation that may yield a better local control in locally advanced cervical cancer.


The distribution of bacterial biomass and activity down to 80 m below the sea floor was investigated in sediments from the Peru margin, collected as part of the Ocean Drilling Programme, leg 112. Bacteria were present in all sediment depths sampled. Although direct bacterial counts decreased with depth there was no indication of a more rapid decline in the deeper layers and thus it is likely that bacteria should be present to much greater depths than those examined in this study. A significant number of the bacteria within the sediment were dividing and hence the bacteria were active and not just surviving. Bacteria were able to be cultured in laboratory media, from all depths, further confirming the viability of these organisms in situ. Bacterial sulphate reduction and methanogenesis were measured even in the deepest samples, although there were marked changes in rates with depth. There were also significant changes in the dominant populations of different types of viable bacteria and their associated activity with sediment depth. Although some of this succession in bacterial activity could be related to chemical changes in the pore water, there were some subtle changes in bacterial activity, possibly related to changes in the bioavailability of organic matter, which would not be anticipated from purely chemical data. Where numbers of viable bacteria and activity were decreasing a brine incursion, from below, dramatically stimulated further growth and activity, even in sediments approximately one million years old.


Yuccas (Yucca, Agavaceae) are an easily recognizable constituent of the vegetation of the International Four Corners; an area made up of portions of Arizona, New Mexico, Sonora and Chihuahua. We recognize three species as native to the region, Yucca baccata, Y. elata and Y. madrensis, together with interspecific hybrids, and document for the first time naturally occurring intersectional hybridization between baccate-fruited (sect. Yucca) and capsular-fruited (sect. Chaenocarpa) species. We examine the reproductive barriers to hybridization operating within the genus, i.e., spatial, temporal and ethological, and we consider circumstances that may have been responsible for the production and widespread distribution of hybrids in the Il-C. These include establishment of syrnpatry, pollinator biology, founding hybrids and human activities. We also reflect on the present situation regarding sexual reproduction in species of Yucca in the Southwest.


A complete second-order analytical solution for the nonlinear diffraction of waves by 2-D rectangular cylinders fixed at the free surface of finite-depth waters is presented. As a sequel to a previous linear treatment of the same problem, the present study revisits the nonlinear wave diffraction modelling in 2-D, in which a series of boundary value problems are built up by a classical perturbation expansion. Particular solution for the second-order potential is derived by means of a Fourier integral theorem, whilst the homogeneous second-order solution is obtained in a way similar to that of the linear problem. The present solution is validated by comparisons with experiments as well as with previous computational results of various researchers.


The present paper draws on works that combine Marxist and Weberian traditions of social structure analysis to interpret the contemporary Brazilian political crisis as a distributive conflict involving four classes or strata (precariat, outsiders, established, millionaires), defined using five determinant vectors of social inequality: wealth, position, knowledge, selective association and existential rights. The four classes or strata considered saw their wealth, their existential rights, and their knowledge grow in the period between 2003 and 2013. However, in this period, the precariat and the outsiders ascended significantly in their social position, while the established lost social position to the extent that their power to exclude outsiders from social spaces formerly reserved for their own usage diminished. The same logic applies to selective associations with regard to gender and race, since during the Workers' Party (PT) administrations there was a decrease in the power of men and whites to discriminate against women and blacks. This loss of position in the hierarchies of class, gender and race fed the resentment of the established against the PT government even in times when, in terms of wealth, they experienced an ascendant trajectory. Starting in 2014, the picture changed. The exacerbation of the economic crisis caused all of the strata, especially the outsiders, to lose wealth. The established, though less threatened by the outsiders (the most affected by the crisis), also experienced social decline as the recession advanced. Finally, the millionaires who had until then been gaining at all of the levels of inequality with the PT governments, lost at least part of their selective associations as the investigations into corruption advanced. It is precisely when the millionaires began to lose that effective changes in favor of the removal of the president began to occur.


Sarcopenia is the age-related loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength. Ultimately, sarcopenia results in the loss of independence, which imposes a large financial burden on healthcare systems worldwide. A critical facet of sarcopenia is the diminished ability for aged muscle to regenerate, repair and remodel. Over the years, research has focused on elucidating underlying mechanisms of sarcopenia and the impaired ability of muscle to respond to stimuli with aging. Muscle-specific stem cells, termed satellite cells (SC), play an important role in maintaining muscle health throughout the lifespan. It is well established that SC are essential in skeletal muscle regeneration, and it has been hypothesized that a reduction and/or dysregulation of the SC pool, may contribute to accelerated loss of skeletal muscle mass that is observed with advancing age. The preservation of skeletal muscle tissue and its ability to respond to stimuli may be impacted by reduced SC content and impaired function observed with aging. Aging is also associated with a reduction in capillarization of skeletal muscle. We have recently demonstrated that the distance between type II fibre-associated SC and capillaries is greater in older compared to younger adults. The greater distance between SC and capillaries in older adults may contribute to the dysregulation in SC activation ultimately impairing muscle's ability to remodel and, in extreme circumstances, regenerate. This viewpoint will highlight the importance of optimal SC activation in addition to skeletal muscle capillarization to maximize the regenerative potential of skeletal muscle in older adults.


Background Animals are chronically infected by benign and beneficial microorganisms that generally promote animal health through their effects on the nutrition, immune function and other physiological systems of the host. Insight into the host-microbial interactions can be obtained by comparing the traits of animals experimentally deprived of their microbiota and untreated animals. Drosophila melanogaster is an experimentally tractable system to study host-microbial interactions. Methodology/Principal Findings The nutritional significance of the microbiota was investigated in D. melanogaster bearing unmanipulated microbiota, demonstrated by 454 sequencing of 16S rRNA amplicons to be dominated by the α-proteobacterium Acetobacter, and experimentally deprived of the microbiota by egg dechorionation (conventional and axenic flies, respectively). In axenic flies, larval development rate was depressed with no effect on adult size relative to conventional flies, indicating that the microbiota promotes larval growth rates. Female fecundity did not differ significantly between conventional and axenic flies, but axenic flies had significantly reduced metabolic rate and altered carbohydrate allocation, including elevated glucose levels. Conclusions/Significance We have shown that elimination of the resident microbiota extends larval development and perturbs energy homeostasis and carbohydrate allocation patterns of of D. melanogaster. Our results indicate that the resident microbiota promotes host nutrition and interacts with the regulation of host metabolism.


The administration of a cathartic alone has no role in the management of the poisoned patient and is not recommended as a method of gut decontamination. Experimental data are conflicting regarding the use of cathartics in combination with activated charcoal. No clinical studies have been published to investigate the ability of a cathartic, with or without activated charcoal, to reduce the bioavailability of drugs or to improve the outcome of poisoned patients. Based on available data, the routine use of a cathartic in combination with activated charcoal is not endorsed. If a cathartic is used, it should be limited to a single dose in order to minimize adverse effects of the Cathartic. A review of the literature since the preparation of the 1997 Cathartics Position Statement revealed no new evidence that would require a revision of the conclusions of the Statement.


OBJECTIVE
To identify barriers experienced and perceived at discharge by physicians, nurses, patients and relatives.

DESIGN
We developed questionnaires based on focus group interviews with hospital and community care providers, and individual interviews with patients and relatives. A survey was conducted among patients, relatives and related nurses and physicians from hospital and community care.

SETTING
One university hospital and the related community care area in the Netherlands.

PARTICIPANTS
Thirty health-care providers and eight patients and/or relatives participated in focus group and individual interviews. Questionnaires were returned by 344 health-care providers and 206 patients and relatives.

RESULTS
Information from the hospital to community care is often incomplete, unclear and delayed. Especially hospital physicians (52%) and general practitioners (GPs; 63%) experience the quality of information exchanged from the hospital to the GP as poor. Coordination of care is often frustrated by a lack of care provider knowledge and collaboration. Hospital physicians (47%) and GPs (71%) feel that hospital physicians are often not sufficiently aware of the patient's home situation. Respectively, 59 and 81% experience that the GP is often not clearly informed about expected tasks and responsibilities at discharge.

CONCLUSIONS
This is the first study that provides a clear picture of the experiences and perceptions of stakeholders regarding handovers at hospital discharge. Lack of knowledge, understanding and interest between hospital and community care providers are important causes for ineffective and unsafe discharge. The study suggests that improvement efforts should be focused more on these aspects, as primary conditions for improving hospital discharge.


BACKGROUND
PENK (proenkephalin) is a stable surrogate for enkephalins, endogenous opioid peptides, which exert cardiodepressive effects and improve renal function. PENK has been associated with heart failure (HF) severity and renal dysfunction. We therefore hypothesized that PENK could be associated with deterioration of kidney function and could have a role as a novel renal marker in HF.

METHODS AND RESULTS
In 2180 patients with HF of a large multicenter cohort (BIOSTAT-CHF [A Systems Biology Study to Tailored Treatment in Chronic Heart Failure]), the relationship between PENK and clinical variables, plasma and urinary biomarkers, and clinical end points was established. Data were validated in a separate cohort of 1703 patients with HF. PENK was elevated (>80 pmol/L, 99th percentile) in 1245 (57%) patients. Higher PENK was associated with more advanced HF and glomerular and tubular dysfunction. The strongest independent predictor of PENK was estimated glomerular filtration rate. Others were plasma NGAL (neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin) and NT-proBNP (N-terminal pro-B-type natriuretic peptide; all P<0.001). Using correlation heatmaps and hierarchical cluster analyses, PENK clustered with estimated glomerular filtration rate, creatinine, NGAL, galectin-3, and urea. Higher PENK was independently associated with increased risk of deterioration of kidney function between baseline and 9 months (odds ratio, 1.29 [1.02-1.65] per PENK doubling; P=0.038; defined as >25% decrease in estimated glomerular filtration rate) and mortality (hazard ratio, 1.23 [1.07-1.43] per doubling; P=0.004). Analyses in the validation cohort yielded comparable findings.

CONCLUSIONS
Higher PENK levels are associated with more severe HF, with glomerular and tubular renal dysfunction, with incidence of a deterioration of kidney function, and with mortality. These findings suggest that the opioid system might be involved in deteriorating kidney function in HF.


The spontaneous gastric rupture without a preexisting gastric ulcer is an extremely rare event. In the case presented we report the occurrence of a gastric rupture in context with a giant left scrotal hernia. The entire intestine was transposed into the hernial sack and this obviously led to a chronic distension of the stomach and finally to the spontaneous gastric rupture. Other reasons of a spontaneous gastric rupture as well as the surgical therapy are discussed. Important are a fast diagnosis and surgical revision in order to prevent patients from a massive diffuse peritonitis.


Previous studies of poverty governance have focused on the welfare system, the criminal justice system, and the connections between them. Yet less attention has been paid to a third institution that bridges the gap between these two systems: child support enforcement. Jailing for child support nonpayment is one of many mechanisms of child support enforcement, but little is known about this tactic. Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, the author examines the process of nonresident fathers' (1) acquiring a formal support order, (2) accruing child support debt, and (3) being jailed for this debt. The author proposes two pathways into jail for child support nonpayment—public assistance and relationship context—and demonstrates how each pathway affects the risk for jail. Overall, 14 percent of debtors spend time in jail for child support by the time their children are nine years old.


Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is an established technique to model, analyze and optimize material and information flows in a manufacturing company. VSM does supply a graphical notation, however, it does not provide an automatic execution model. As a result, the flows modeled in VSM need to be mapped to executable ITSystems manually. This paper proposes an approach to enable automatic execution of VSM flows which is achieved by mapping the VSM language to an established business process modeling language such as the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN). Processes modeled in BPMN can be automatically translated into executable processes. This enables executing both, the manufacturing processes and the business processes of a company in the same IT environment. Thus, interoperability is enabled between shop floor and office area.


Views of Feminist Family Therapy: A Q-Methodological Inquiry Bronwen Cheek Virginia Consortium for Professional Psychology, 1995 Co-chairs: Michael Rohrbaugh, Ph.D., and Ellen Rosen, Ph.D. The feminist critique of family therapy has had a growing impact on theory and practice for almost two decades (Hare-Mustin, 1978; Bograd, 1990). Writings on feminist family therapy (FFT) reveal both common and diverse opinions about what FFT is. The present study examined how views of FFT are segmented using Q-methodology (Stephenson, 1953; Brown, 1980; McKeown & Thomas, 1988), a small-sample empirical technique for identifying emergent viewpoints and studying their similarities and differences. A Q-sort instrument of 60 statements was constructed to sample diverse discourse on FFT. Magraw's (1992) interviews with leading experts in FFT served as a primary source for loosely structuring the Q-sort instrument into hypothesized areas of consensus and divergence in FFT; a smaller set of items sampled critiques of both FFT and feminism in the broader culture. A convenience sample of 29 experienced and novice family therapists, 12 of whom were experts in FFT, ranked the statements by sorting them into 10 categories along a continuum from "least agree" (category 1) to "most agree" (category 10). Factor analysis of correlations among the Q-sorts produced six emergent factors or viewpoints accounting for 69% of the variance. Two factors represented distinctly feminist viewpoints; all Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the FFT experts loaded on one of these two factors. The remaining participants were scattered across four other factors, representing various views of FFT. The two feminist views were interpreted in the context of schools of feminism. Three issues in particular distinguished the two views of FFT: whether feminist energy should be directed toward both sexes or more toward women; whether racial inequities override gender inequities; and the place of hierarchy between therapist and clients. Respondents on the two feminist viewpoints shared some common ground: they rejected therapeutic neutrality; viewed therapy as a political act; and endorsed challenging power arrangements in the family. The results suggest that views of FFT can be understood in a broader intellectual context: diverse views of FFT appear to parallel divisions of opinion in feminist theories and in cultural perceptions of the women's movement. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.


Radiation pollution has been always a critical concern, since it can cause a huge damage to humans and for nature. To minimize the damage, governments are collecting and monitoring radiation level using advanced systems. In the past years, Big data technologies such as distributed file systems, NoSQL databases and stream processing technologies was implemented in the radiation monitoring systems to improve their abilities to handle huge volume of data coming from different sources in a high speed. As Big data technologies are being improved frequently to handles the fast growth of the data, these systems need to be updated and improved periodically to adopt new technologies and to guarantee a higher control over radiation exposure. In this paper, we proposed a system called ORADIEX which is an improvement of our previous published work RaDEn [2]. It has the ability to (1) reading data from sensors and different sources, (2) processing data in real-time, (3) stores raw radiation data as it comes from sources, (4) clean data and stores it in a time-series database, (5) visualize and monitor data in real-time, (6) send alert when a high radiation level is detected and (7) allow performing advanced data retrieval operations over raw and processed data. In addition, this system was implemented and tested using a real dataset provided by the Lebanese Atomic Energy Commission (LAEC-CNRS). Keywords—Radiation, data engineering, Big Data, radiation monitoring, real-time processing


Within the SW Grampian Highlands several NE–SW-trending shear zones and faults related to the Caledonian transpressional collision are recognized as being distinct from an intersecting set of NW–SE-trending pre-Caledonian crustal lineaments which were reactivated during Caledonian orogenesis. The geochemical and isotopic characteristics of the 425–400 Ma granitoids of this region show that they were derived by anatexis of the lower crust associated with a mantle component which provided an influx of mantle heat and/or metasomatic fluids; their spatial distribution suggests a close genetic relationship with Caledonian shear zones. Having made the fundamental distinction between ascent (transport) and emplacement (arrival) configurations possible for granitoid magmas, new data are presented for these plutons which show that: (i) a common modal sequence of intrusive phases can be recognized; (ii) these phases are all sited at shear zone or lineament intersections where transtensional zones allowed and facilitated ascent; (iii) emplacement was often by a process of localized in situ ballooning. The existence of such lineaments in these orientations in the SW Highlands may indicate that the structure of the lower crust can be regarded as a series of blocks bounded by intersecting ductile zones of high strain. The establishment of such a pattern of structural interactions within the lower crust could provide a mechanistic framework within which the location of anatectic zones, siting and ascent pathways and any subsequent emplacement phenomena can be explained in orogenic belts.


This study reports on digital production facilities' installation and development at Queensland Newspapers Ply. Ltd. (QNPL), between 1996 and 2002. QNPL is Australia's fifth largest capital city newspaper organisation and part of the News Limited group, controlled by Rupel1 Murdoch's transnational News Corporation. The study documents the architecture of the infrastructure, which was needed so that large-scale pagination and Internet communications could be implemented at the journalism workforce. This documentation parallels digital architecture within News Limited Australia-wide since 1995 and shows how News Limited was able to achieve national production efficiencies using digital networking between editorial sites, initially in capital cities. Of extra interest is the fact that central elements of these digital networks, pagination software, and practices - especially Microsoft Windows-driven pagination packages - were implemented and tested in Queensland before they were implemented at other News Limited enterprises and this makes the QNPL experience of special impOl1ance. Coincidentally, as this article is being published, QNPL has just announced that implementation of personal desktop email and Internet access for all its journalists is nearly complete, having commenced roll-out more than five years before.


ABSTRACT Climate changes on Iraq characterized by increasing droughts and desertification cause many environmental problems especially in the last decade. In this study, a model was designed to forecast selected weather variables in Nineveh province which is located in northwestern of Iraq based on artificial neural networks consisting radial basis function, Fuzzy C-Means, and Nonlinear Autoregressive Network with Exogenous inputs. The performance accuracy of this developed model gives very close predicted results with very small statistic errors for predicted period years from 2015 till the year 2050 then the model begins to collapse and its results are irrational. An interface window was designed to be an easy facility to work on this model without any difficulty or complexity. This model is a very useful tool for decision-makers for developing future plans to address the rapid climate changes in the study area.


Future time perspective refers to the extent to which individuals consider the future when making decisions about the present (Husman & Shell, 2008). Because development of expertise requires engaging in large amounts of effortful practice (Ericsson et al., 1993) designed to reach goals at a future point in time (Cote, Baker & Abernethy, 2003), we examined whether future time perspective contributes to time spent in sport practice and achieved success. Competitive athletes (n = 363; Mage = 30.7, SD = 12.5; 49% male) from various team and individual sports completed two subscales of Husman and Shell's (2008) Future Time Perspective Scale and reported their weekly structured practice amounts and highest competitive level. An exploratory structural equation model with value (7 items) and connectedness (7 items) subscales had adequate fit: ?2(64) = 143.35, p < .001; RMSEA = .051 [.040-.062]; CFI = .924; TLI = .891. Analyses of variance demonstrated no significant differences between four competitive groups (city/regional, provincial, national, international) for value, F(3, 346) = 0.16, p = .90, or connectedness, F(3, 350) = 0.43, p = .56. No significant correlations were demonstrated between weekly structured practice amount and either value (r = .03) or connectedness (r = -.03). These results suggest that cross-sectional self-report of valuing long-term goals and connecting current actions to future goals do not associate with engaging in more practice, nor to achieving higher levels of sport skill. We consider methodological and conceptual reasons for these findings.Acknowledgments: This work was supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Development Grant 430-2015-00904 (Bradley W. Young, PI).


Abstract. The geomagnetic field declination (D) and horizontal component (H) were observed visually at the Helsinki magnetic observatory between 1844–1912. About 2.0 million single observations of the magnetic components are available. The observing equipment and observation methods were the same for almost 70 years. The Helsinki data series is thus rather homogeneous and suitable for magnetic field analysis of both internal and external origin for about five sunspot cycles (sunspot cycles 9–13). Due to disturbances from nearby electric tramway traffic, most of the observations after 1897 are very noisy and unreliable for magnetic activity studies. Observations of D (1844–1897) have been converted into an absolute scale but H refers to variation values only. Observations of D have been previously analyzed and published for the time interval 1844–1880. In this paper we present new results of D for 1881–1897 and H for 1844–1897. The annual rate of the secular variation of D has been rather stable between 1844–1909, showing a mean eastward increase of +0.11°/year, which is about twice as large as the mean secular variation rate for the past 50 years at the same latitude in Finland. Around 1875 there was a sudden change in the secular variation rate resembling the famous jerk of 1970. Magnetic activity indices (K, Ak) for 1844–1897 were calculated from hourly values of D- and D-series separately using the IAGA K-index algorithm (the FMI-method). Comparisons with other relevant activity series from other sources (aa, u, RI, C9, auroral occurrence rate) show that the Helsinki index series gives an important contribution to the index family. By extending the Mayaud's aa-index series with Helsinki Ak-values (1844–1868), it is possible to reconstruct a (pseudo) aa-series that covers almost 160 years. Magnetic activity (space weather) was appreciably greater during the first three cycles (9–11) than during the two last ones (12–13). The largest magnetic storm occurred in September 1859. Other stormy periods were in 1847, 1852, and 1870–1872. Mean magnetic activity remained exceptionally low in years 1875–1881 and 1887–1891. In an FFT-analysis of the activity index series, the solar cycle, annual, semiannual, solar rotation and half solar rotation spectral lines are well established. Key words. Geomagnetism and paleomagnetism (time variations, diurnal to secular) – History of geophysics (planetology) – Magnetospheric physics (solar wind-magnetosphere interactions)7


To analyse the biological role of 5-methylation of cytosine residues in DNA requires precise and efficient methods for detecting individual 5-methylcytosines (5-MeCs) in genomic DNA. The methods developed over the past decade rely on either differential enzymatic or chemical cleavage of DNA, or more recently on differential sensitivity to chemical conversion of one base to another. The most commonly used methods for studying the methylation profile of DNA, including the bisulphite base-conversion method, are reviewed.


Sample-efficiency guarantees for offline reinforcement learning (RL) often rely on strong assumptions on both the function classes (e.g., Bellman-completeness) and the data coverage (e.g., all-policy concentrability). Despite the recent efforts on relaxing these assumptions, existing works are only able to relax one of the two factors, leaving the strong assumption on the other factor intact. As an important open problem, can we achieve sample-efficient offline RL with weak assumptions on both factors? In this paper we answer the question in the positive. We analyze a simple algorithm based on the primal-dual formulation of MDPs, where the dual variables (discounted occupancy) are modeled using a density-ratio function against offline data. With proper regularization, we show that the algorithm enjoys polynomial sample complexity, under only realizability and single-policy concentrability. We also provide alternative analyses based on different assumptions to shed light on the nature of primal-dual algorithms for offline RL.


SUMMARY
GeneCluster 2.0 is a software package for analyzing gene expression and other bioarray data, giving users a variety of methods to build and evaluate class predictors, visualize marker lists, cluster data and validate results. GeneCluster 2.0 greatly expands the data analysis capabilities of GeneCluster 1.0 by adding classification, class discovery and permutation test methods. It includes algorithms for building and testing supervised models using weighted voting and k-nearest neighbor algorithms, a module for systematically finding and evaluating clustering via self-organizing maps, and modules for marker gene selection and heat map visualization that allow users to view and sort samples and genes by many criteria. GeneCluster 2.0 is a stand-alone Java application and runs on any platform that supports the Java Runtime Environment version 1.3.1 or greater.

AVAILABILITY
http://www.broad.mit.edu/cancer/software


This study was carried out in 2018 in order to determine the resistance of flower buds and flowers to low temperatures in winter and spring periods in Kutahya sour cherry cultivar, in Konya's conditions. In order to determine the temperature of the flower buds and flowers, the samples taken at different periods were gradually placed in the temperature-lowered cabinet and tested. The buds were tested, held at temperatures between 0 and -22 o C. After the application, 70% or above of damaged buds were considered dead. In addition, total, bound and free water, dry matter, total carbohydrate, protein, proline and nutrient levels were determined. Differences between the mortality rates of buds and flowers at different temperatures were statistically significant. In the winter season, buds with high frost resistance started to lose this resistance towards the spring season. Temperatures of more than 50% of buds are observed at -16°C on 29.01; 20.02 and 06.03 at -15°C; 20.03 at -11°C; it was determined as -10°C on 05.04 and 20.04. According to this, in the city center of Konya cherry flower buds are damaged by frost until the end of March and the probability of damage after this period is reduced. With the emergence of winter season, the water content of the buds has increased significantly. A rapid decrease in the amount of bound water was found in the buds with the emergence of winter and a rapid increase in the amount of free water. On the other hand, the dry matter contents remained stable between 29.01 and 05.03, and a rapid increase occurred on 19.03. The differences between the nutrient amounts were found to be statistically significant. According to this, the content of N in buds has decreased continuously between 29.01 and 20.04. The amounts of P, K, Mn, Zn and S increased from 29.01 to 20.03 and started to decrease after this date. Mg and Fe amounts increased regularly until 20.03 and remained stable after this date. Ca and Cu levels increased until 06.03, then began to fall. The B content increased continuously. The amount of Zn increased regularly until 05.04 and then decreased. S content fluctuated on different dates. Significant differences were determined in terms of carbohydrate content in buds. According to this, the carbohydrate content decreased regularly from 29.01 until 05.04 and started to rise again in 19.04. Bud's protein contents showed a steady decrease in successive sampling periods. The differences between the contents of the proline were not statistically significant.


Fluidized catalytic cracking (FCC) units in refineries process heavy feedstock obtained from crude oil distillation. While cracking feed, catalysts get deactivated due to coke deposition. During catalyst regeneration by burning coke in air, nitrogen oxides (NOx) are formed. The increase in nitrogen content in feed over time has resulted in increased NOx emissions. To predict NOx concentration in flue gas, a reliable model for FCC regenerators is needed that requires comprehensive understanding and accurate kinetics for NOx formation. Based on the nitrogen-containing functional groups on coke, model molecules are selected to study reactions between coke-bound nitrogen and O2 to form NO and NO2 using density functional theory. The reaction kinetics for the proposed pathways are evaluated using transition state theory. It is observed that the addition of O2 on coke is favored only when the free radical is present on the carbon atom instead of nitrogen atom. Thus, NOx formation during coke oxidation does not result from the direct attack by O2 on N atoms of coke, but from the transfer of an O atom to N from a neighboring site. The low activation energies required for NO formation indicate that it is more likely to form than NO2 during coke oxidation. The favorable pathways for NOx formation that can be used in FCC models are identified.


We predict pressure and stress from porosity in the Nankai accretionary prism with a critical state soil model that describes porosity as a function of mean stress and maximum shear stress, and assumes Coulomb failure within the wedge and uniaxial burial beneath it. At Ocean Drilling Program Sites 1174 and 808, we find that pore pressure in the prism supports 70% to 90% of the overburden (λu = 0.7 to 0.9), for a range of assumed friction angles (5–30°). The prism pore pressure is equal to or greater than that in the underthrust sediments even though the porosity is lower within the prism. The high pore pressures lead to a mechanically weak wedge that supports low maximum shear stress, and this in turn requires very low basal traction to remain consistent with the observed narrowly tapered wedge geometry. We estimate the décollement friction coefficient (μb) to be ~0.08–0.38 (ϕb′ = 4.6°–21°). Our approach defines a pathway to predict pressure in a wide range of environments from readily observed quantities (e.g., porosity and seismic velocity). Pressure and stress control the form of the Earth's collisional continental margins and play a key role in its greatest earthquakes. However, heretofore, there has been no systematic approach to relate material state (e.g., porosity), pore pressure, and stress in these systems.


Software is created by people---software engineers---working in varied environments, under various conditions. Thus understanding cooperative and human aspect of software development is crucial to comprehend how methods and tools are used, and thereby improving the creation and maintenance of software. Inspired by the hosting country's concept of co-responsibility -- ubuntu -- we especially invited contributions that address community-based development like open source development and sustainability of ICT eco-systems. The goal of this workshop is to provide a forum for discussing high quality research on human and cooperative aspects of software engineering. We aim at providing both a meeting place for the growing community and the possibility for researchers interested in joining the field to present their work in progress and get an overview over the field.