This study was conducted in Bukoba District where land shortage and poor soil fertility are predominant thus limiting the productivity of the land. In this farming system, grasslands form an integral part in land productivity. However, changes in land tenure systems particularly for grasslands in recent years have undermined the functionality of the agro-ecological system. This study was designed to explore the roles of grasslands in sustainable improvements of land productivity through intensification of three predominant land use types namely Kibanja, Kikamba, and Rweya. Research methods involved interviews, group discussions, and retrieval of archival information on changing tenure systems; field experimentation and model development. Data were analysed for descriptive statistics, principal component analysis, ANOVA and modelling by SPSS, Conoco, GENSTAT and GAMS, respectively. Results established that customary tenure and land use practices have been destabilized by changes aimed at privatization of grasslands. Characterisation of farming households revealed three virtual farm types (FT) distinguished by: soil fertility management strategies, food security, and farm and off-farm income being important indicators of variability. All FT were found to be net food buyers annually. Grassland productivity revealed annual biomass production of 7.4 t ha-1 and 7.1 t ha-1 at high and low rainfall zones, respectively. The nutritive qualities of grasses were generally low throughout measurement period, although was better during first six months after burning implying the best grazing phase. Sustainability options for the three virtual FT showed that Kibanja productivity can be maintained in the absence of cattle provided that sufficient area of Kikamba to grow herbaceous legumes for supplying adequate N and K for optimum Kibanja productivity. Farm labour were found amounting to only 35%, 25%, and 39% of the available family labour for FT1, FT2, and FT3, respectively, implying presence of excess labour that could be allocated to off-farm activities. These findings imply that the productivity of Kibanja could be sustained even in absence of cattle provided there is sufficient land area for Rweya and Kikamba accessible to farming households.


Material and behavioural elements associated with the term Neolithic are almost completely absent in Australia. Among the few exceptions are the domesticated dog (originating in the Near East and reaching Australia by 3,500 years ago as the dingo), together with limited evidence for permanent settlements, food storage, long-distance trade and manipulation of wild resources in some areas. While it has been suggested that the latter developments represent independent local trends toward more complex societies that might have led to an Australian Neolithic if not for the arrival of Europeans, the Neolithic is essentially conspicuous by its absence. Particularly striking is the absence of agricultural practices, despite recent claims to the contrary. Also not present is another one of the original (though generally over-looked) defining attributes of the Neolithic: the weaving of textile fibres for clothing. Claims for indigenous Australian agriculture are reviewed here, and the few purported cases are found to be weak. An unconventional model for the transition to agriculture is presented, advocating a significant formative role for clothing, specifically textiles. This suggests that a typical absence of clothing (and total absence of textile clothing) provides a clue as to why agriculture did not develop in Australia.


This paper investigates the main differences between wind and tidal turbines and shows that, despite the fact that they achieve the same goal of extracting energy from a moving fluid, they produce very difference forces and have different operational behaviors. The analysis begins by considering simple physical relationships to draw general conclusions. Results are then presented from simulations of two generic 1MW turbines: one marine turbine and one wind turbine to show the dynamic case.


The contact and non-contact measuring methods were adopted to measure the twisted blades of the turbine in a casting torque converter. The curves were reconstructed using the B-spline and Bezier curve. Then the blade parameters were extracted based on the conformal transformation. Compared with the original data of the designed blades, measuring results of both methods were effective, while errors existed during both measuring processes including data missing error, measurement error and fitting error. Compared with the contact measuring method, the non-contact measuring method needed improvement because of its larger errors, which is mainly caused by the shrink and distortion of silicone rubber. But non-contact measuring method will be a trend in measurement system because of its own advantages such as expeditiousness, automation and the ability of acquiring relatively comprehensive information.


"This volume emerges from a ground-breaking conference held in the Republic of Palau on cultural heritage in the Pacific. It includes bold investigations of the role of cultural heritage in identity-making, and the ways in which community engagement informs heritage management practices. This is the first broad and detailed investigation of the unique and irreplaceable cultural heritage of the Pacific from a heritage management perspective. It identifies new trends in research and assesses relationships between archaeologists, heritage managers and local communities. The methods which emerge from these relationships will be critical to the effective management of heritage sites in the 21st century. A wonderful book which emerges from an extraordinary conference. Essential reading for cultural heritage managers, archaeologists and others with an interest in caring for the unique cultural heritage of the Pacific Islands".


For experimental tests of fluctuation theory in ideal plasmas and plasmas seeded with dust, the ideal environment would be that of stable quiescent plasma. In most laboratory plasmas the homogeneous state of the positive column is often unstable, rare exceptions are the so-called brush cathode discharges, proposed in the 60s, where a specially manufactured cathode allows stable operation in the abnormal glow regime and the only fluctuations present are those due the thermal motion of the particles. Such a device, the BAri Brush Electrode (BABE), has recently been built in a novel configuration that combines the advantages of the inverse design with those of the reflex geometry. The region between the two anodes is essentially field-free and extremely stable in wide range of plasma densities and collisionalities. Unprecedented low fluctuation levels of δn/n ⩽ 10−5 in He and δn/n ⩽ 5 × 10−6 in Ar discharges have been achieved.


Background: NovoTTF Therapy is a non-invasive, anti-mitotic treatment modality, based on low intensity alternating electric fields. Tumor Treating Fields (TTFields) interfere with two steps during mitosis: The formation of the mitotic spindle (metaphase), and the translocation of charged organelles (anaphase). TTFields inhibit proliferation of pancreatic cell lines in vitro, and inhibit pancreatic tumor growth in vivo, alone and in combination with gemcitabine. NovoTTF Therapy applied to the brain in recurrent GBM patients demonstrated an anti-tumoral effect with minimal toxicity and better quality of life, compared to chemotherapy (Stupp et al, 2012). Being a regional treatment, TTFields can potentially inhibit the primary tumor as well as major metastatic sites of pancreatic adenocarcinoma. Objectives: the current trial is designed to study the safety, tolerability and efficacy of NovoTTF therapy applied to the abdomen concomitant to the standard care gemcitabine treatment, in patients suffering from advanced pancreatic adenocarcinoma. Endpoints: severity and frequency of adverse events associated with the experimental treatment (primary), progression free survival (PFS), 6-month PFS rate, overall survival, overall response rate, compliance with NovoTTF Therapy (secondary) Treatments: Gemcitabine 1000 mg/m^2 over 30 minute infusion once weekly for up to 7 weeks, followed by a week rest from treatment. Subsequent cycles will consist of once weekly infusions on days 1, 8, 15 every 28 days. Continuous NovoTTF Therapy at a frequency of 150 kHz will be administered to the abdomen, in order to cover the region of primary tumor and main metastatic sites. The fields will be applied in two perpendicular directions at a maximal intensity of 1414 mA RMS, using highly insulated Transducer Arrays connected to a portable, battery-operated electric field generator. TTFields will be administered for at least 18 hours a day until radiological disease progression. Major eligibility criteria: unresectable, pathologically confirmed, locally advanced/metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma, measurable/assessable disease, ECOG score 0-1, no prior chemotherapy or radiation, no implantable electronic medical devices. Citation Format: Uri Weinberg, Eilon D. Kirson, Ori Farber, Moshe Giladi, Yoram Palti. An open label pilot study of NovoTTF Therapy concomitant with gemcitabine for front-line therapy of advanced pancreatic adenocarcinoma (NCT01971281). [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr CT420. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-CT420


Waste disposal is one of the environmental challenges facing city authorities. Waste contains nutrients and organic matter required for plant growth that can, in many cases, be recovered and put to use. Quantifying the amount of waste generated and nutrients that can be recovered from it is important. Further, cost of applying the waste on land should be evaluated in order to make wise investment decisions. Globally much of the waste generated is disposed without resource recovery. Therefore, the objectives of this study were to 1) quantify the amount waste generated in the Reykjavík capital area in Iceland, 2) determine the quantity of phosphorus contained in waste and 3) evaluate the cost of transporting the waste to nearby restoration sites and spreading it on the field. Operational data were collected from operators of wastewater and municipal waste treatment in the capital area. The capital area generated 722 tons/year of sewage sludge, 98,890 tons/year of solid waste and 82 million m/year of wastewater in 2015. Wastewater treatment and municipal waste contributed 68% and 32% phosphorus, respectively. Phosphorus disposed in waste was 435% higher than the phosphorus used by the Soil Conservation Service in 2015. If all this phosphorus were recovered, it would most likely meet all the phosphorus requirements for land restoration in Iceland. The cost of utilizing phosphorus from waste is higher than using inorganic fertilizers. However, for highly degraded soils, such as those with an erosion scale of 3-5, application of waste would quicken soil recovery as it is rich in organic matter and nutrients. Further, utilizing waste reduces environmental pollution and conserves the non-renewable phosphorus reserves. The study recommends that waste be utilized in restoration as a means of recovering and reusing phosphorus. Legislation should be put in place to encourage waste utilization in land restoration. Land Restoration Training Programme Keldnaholt, 112 Reykjavik, Iceland UNU Land Restoration Training Programme ii This paper should be cited as: Mdolo P (2016) Sewage sludge and municipal waste: potential sources of phosphorus for land restoration. United Nations University Land Restoration Training Programme [final project] http://www.unulrt.is/static/fellows/document/Mdolo2016.pdf UNU Land Restoration Training Programme iii TABLE OF CONTENTS


Background: The aim of this study was to explore Saudi cancer patients' views regarding cancer information disclosure and whether differences existed between regions or gender. Methods: In this cross-sectional questionnaire-based prospective survey, we interviewed 332 Saudi cancer patients who received oncological care at King Fahd University Hospital, Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia from July 2002 to July 2009 to explore their attitudes regarding disclosure of cancer information. Results: The vast majority of Saudi cancer patients wanted to know the diagnosis of cancer (98%) and only 2% wanted the information to remain undisclosed. Seventy percent of the women wanted family members to know compared to only 39% of the men ( P<0.001). Only 10% of the patients wanted their friends to know. In this study, 99% and 98%, respectively, wanted to know about the benefits of therapy and about their diagnosis of cancer. Of both genders, 98% also wanted to know the side effects of therapy and the prognosis. The attitudes of Saudi men and women with cancer were almost identical apart from sharing information with their family members. 99% of eastern region cancer patients wanted the diagnosis of cancer disclosed compared to 74% of those from other regions ( P=0.04). Conclusion: The findings of this study indicated that most Saudi cancer patients wanted disclosure of cancer information. Significantly more women than men wanted to share information with their family. More Eastern region patients wanted to know about their diagnosis of cancer compared to patients from other regions.


The authors retrospectively reviewed a consecutive series of patients with diffuse intracranial dolichoectasia and compared demographics, vascular risk factors, additional aneurysm prevalence, and clinical outcomes with a group of patients with vertebrobasilar dolichoectasia. Twenty-five patients had diffuse intracranial dolichoectasia, and 139 had vertebrobasilar dolichoectasia. Patients with diffuse intracranial dolichoectasia were older than those with vertebrobasilar dolichoectasia and had a higher prevalence of abdominal aortic aneurysms, other visceral aneurysms, and smoking history. Patients with diffuse intracranial dolichoectasia were more likely to have aneurysm growth. They conclude that the natural history of patients with diffuse intracranial dolichoectasia is significantly worse than that in those with isolated vertebrobasilar dolichoectasia. BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Among patients with vertebrobasilar dolichoectasia is a subset of patients with disease affecting the anterior circulation as well. We hypothesized that multivessel intracranial dolichoectasia may represent a distinct phenotype from single-territory vertebrobasilar dolichoectasia. The purpose of this study was to characterize clinical characteristics and angiographic features of this proposed distinct phenotype termed "diffuse intracranial dolichoectasia" and compare them with those in patients with isolated vertebrobasilar dolichoectasia. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed a consecutive series of patients with diffuse intracranial dolichoectasia and compared their demographics, vascular risk factors, additional aneurysm prevalence, and clinical outcomes with a group of patients with vertebrobasilar dolichoectasia. "Diffuse intracranial dolichoectasia" was defined as aneurysmal dilation of entire vascular segments involving ≥2 intracranial vascular beds. Categoric and continuous variables were compared by using χ2 and Student t tests, respectively. RESULTS: Twenty-five patients had diffuse intracranial dolichoectasia, and 139 had vertebrobasilar dolichoectasia. Patients with diffuse intracranial dolichoectasia were older than those with vertebrobasilar dolichoectasia (70.9 ± 14.2 years versus 60.4 ± 12.5 years, P = .0002) and had a higher prevalence of abdominal aortic aneurysms (62.5% versus 14.3%, P = .01), other visceral aneurysms (25.0% versus 0%, P < .0001), and smoking (68.0% versus 15.9%, P < .0001). Patients with diffuse intracranial dolichoectasia were more likely to have aneurysm growth (46.2% versus 21.5%, P = .09) and rupture (20% versus 3.5%, P = .007) at follow-up. Patients with diffuse intracranial dolichoectasia were less likely to have good neurologic function at follow-up (24.0% versus 57.6%, P = .004) and were more likely to have aneurysm-related death (24.0% versus 7.2%, P = .02). CONCLUSIONS: The natural history of patients with diffuse intracranial dolichoectasia is significantly worse than that in those with isolated vertebrobasilar dolichoectasia. Many patients with diffuse intracranial dolichoectasia had additional saccular and abdominal aortic aneurysms. These findings suggest that diffuse intracranial dolichoectasia may be a distinct vascular phenotype secondary to a systemic arteriopathy affecting multiple vascular beds.


The differential-geometrical framework is given for analyzing statistical problems related to multi-parameter families of distributions. The dualistic structures of the exponential families and curved exponential families are elucidated from the geometrical viewpoint. The duality connected by the Legendre transformation is thus extended to include two kinds of affine connections and two kinds of curvatures. The second-order information loss is calculated for Fisher-efficient estimators, and is decomposed into the sum of two non-negative terms. One is related to the exponential curvature of the statistical model and the other is related to the mixture curvature of the estimator. Only the latter term depends on the estimator, and vanishes for the maximum-likelihood estimator. A set of statistics which recover the second-order information loss are given. The second-order efficiency also is obtained. The differential geometry of the function space of distributions is discussed.


The term 'gene silencing' refers to transcriptional and post-transcriptional control of gene expression. Related processes are found across kingdoms in plants and animals. We intended to test whether particular RNA constituents of a silenced plant can induce silencing in an animal. We generated Nicotiana benthamiana lines that expressed green fluorescent protein (GFP) from a transgene. Plants in which GFP expression was spontaneously silenced showed siRNAs characteristic of post-transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS). RNA extracts prepared from silenced plants were injected into a GFP-expressing strain of Caenorhabditis elegans, where they induced RNA interference (RNAi). Extracts from non-silenced plants were inactive. This directly demonstrates a relationship and a mechanistic link between PTGS and RNAi. Controls confirmed that the silencing agent was an RNA. Size fractionation on denaturing gels revealed that an RNA of approximately 85 nt was most active in inducing silencing in the worm. Northern blot analysis of the region in question did not detect a prominent GFP-specific RNA of sense or antisense polarity, indicating that the RNA species which induced silencing was present only in low concentration or did not hybridize due to formation of an intramolecular double strand. In view of its high activity, it is possible that this agent is responsible for the systemic spread of silencing in plants and it might represent the aberrant RNA, a previously postulated inducer of silencing.


Large language models have shown impressive few-shot results on a wide range of tasks. However, when knowledge is key for such results, as is the case for tasks such as question answering and fact checking, massive parameter counts to store knowledge seem to be needed. Retrieval augmented models are known to excel at knowledge intensive tasks without the need for as many parameters, but it is unclear whether they work in few-shot settings. In this work we present Atlas, a carefully designed and pre-trained retrieval augmented language model able to learn knowledge intensive tasks with very few training examples. We perform evaluations on a wide range of tasks, including MMLU, KILT and NaturalQuestions, and study the impact of the content of the document index, showing that it can easily be updated. Notably, Atlas reaches over 42% accuracy on Natural Questions using only 64 examples, outperforming a 540B parameters model by 3% despite having 50x fewer parameters.


Background and aims: As a Development of Industrial process, human, environment, equipment, material and validity of system has been exposed to hazardous conditions. Regards of 32.3 percent of occupations in industries, this study focused on risk assessment of foundry unit by energy trace and barrier analysis (ETBA) method and presented approaches to control of accident. Methods: the recent study is as a case study one to risk assessment in a foundry unit in Qazvin industrial city in1387. In this study risks were founded by ETBA method and evaluated by MILSTD-882B. Data were collected by direct observations, interview with workers and supervisor and engineers, walking-talking through method, documents investigation of operational processors, preventive maintenances, equipment technical properties, accidental and medical documents. Finally ETBA worksheets completed. Findings: totally 154 risks has been found. 40 from total are been unacceptable risk, 68 unfavorable and also 46 acceptable but with remediation action. Casting workshop had risks more than other workshops (with 74 identified risks).Potential and heat energies were founded as most hazardous energies, with respectively 51 and 38 risk cases. Conclusion: This study recommended to be done actions for identification and control risk, such as: safety training, occupation training, preventive maintenance, contract safety, safety communication and safety audit group.


We describe a new method for simulating ionizing radiation and supernova feedback in the analogs of low-redshift galactic disks. In this method, which we call star-forming molecular cloud (SFMC) particles, we use a ray-tracing technique to solve the radiative transfer equation for ultraviolet photons emitted by thousands of distinct particles on the fly. Joined with high numerical resolution of 3.8 pc, the realistic description of stellar feedback helps to self-regulate star formation. This new feedback scheme also enables us to study the escape of ionizing photons from star-forming clumps and from a galaxy, and to examine the evolving environment of star-forming gas clumps. By simulating a galactic disk in a halo of 2.3 × 1011 M☉, we find that the average escape fraction from all radiating sources on the spiral arms (excluding the central 2.5 kpc) fluctuates between 0.08% and 5.9% during a ∼20 Myr period with a mean value of 1.1%. The flux of escaped photons from these sources is not strongly beamed, but manifests a large opening angle of more than 60° from the galactic pole. Further, we investigate the escape fraction per SFMC particle, fesc(i), and how it evolves as the particle ages. We discover that the average escape fraction fesc is dominated by a small number of SFMC particles with high fesc(i). On average, the escape fraction from an SFMC particle rises from 0.27% at its birth to 2.1% at the end of a particle lifetime, 6 Myr. This is because SFMC particles drift away from the dense gas clumps in which they were born, and because the gas around the star-forming clumps is dispersed by ionizing radiation and supernova feedback. The framework established in this study brings deeper insight into the physics of photon escape fraction from an individual star-forming clump and from a galactic disk.


The Janzen-Connell hypothesis explains the maintenance of tropical diversity through the interacting effects of parent-centered dispersal patterns and distance- and density-dependent propagule survival. These effects were thought to support regular spacing of species within tropical forest, enhancing diversity. One of the predictions of the hypothesis is that seed and seedling survival should improve with increased parental distance. Although there are many independent tests of this hypothesis for individual species, there are few synthetic studies that have brought these data together to test its validity across species. This paper reports the results of a meta-analysis of the effect of distance on enhancing propagule survival, employing an odds-ratio effect size metric. We found no general support for the distance-dependent prediction of the hypothesis, and conclude that further testing to explore this hypothesis as a diversity-maintaining mechanism is unnecessary. However, we did find that distance from parent slightly reduces survivorship in the temperate zone, as contrasted with the tropics, and we saw stronger evidence in support of the hypothesis for seedlings than for seeds. The phenomenon of enhanced propagule survival with distance from the parent may be important for the population biology of particular species, but it is not a general phenomenon across communities, life history stages or life forms.


Most state-of-the-art nonrigid shape recovery methods usually use explicit deformable mesh models to regularize surface deformation and constrain the search space. These triangulated mesh models heavily relying on the quadratic regularization term are difficult to accurately capture large deformations, such as severe bending. In this paper, we propose a novel Gaussian process regression approach to the nonrigid shape recovery problem, which does not require to involve a predefined triangulated mesh model. By taking advantage of our novel Gaussian process regression formulation together with a robust coarse-to-fine optimization scheme, the proposed method is fully automatic and is able to handle large deformations and outliers. We conducted a set of extensive experiments for performance evaluation in various environments. Encouraging experimental results show that our proposed approach is both effective and robust to nonrigid shape recovery with large deformations.


Mice lacking the growth hormone receptor (GHRKO) exhibit improved lifespan and healthspan due to loss of growth hormone signaling. Both the distribution and activity of brown and white adipose tissue (BAT and WAT) are altered in GHRKO mice, but the contribution of each tissue to age-related phenotypes has remained unclear. We therefore used whole-genome microarrays to evaluate transcriptional differences in BAT and WAT depots between GHRKO and normal littermates at six months of age. Our findings reveal a unique BAT transcriptome as well as distinctive responses of BAT to Ghr ablation. BAT from GHRKO mice exhibited elevated expression of genes associated with mitochondria and metabolism, along with reduced expression of genes expressed by monocyte-derived cells (dendritic cells [DC] and macrophages). Largely the opposite was observed in WAT, with increased expression of DC-expressed genes and reduced expression of genes associated with metabolism, cellular respiration and the mitochondrial inner envelope. These findings demonstrate divergent response patterns of BAT and WAT to loss of GH signaling in GHRKO mice. These patterns suggest both BAT and WAT contribute in different ways to phenotypes in GHRKO mice, with Ghr ablation blunting inflammation in BAT as well as cellular metabolism and mitochondrial biogenesis in WAT.


Summary The physical and mechanical properties of 100 mm samples extracted from two boreholes through a spoil heap at Yorkshire Main Colliery are considered in order to determine whether or not degradation is taking place within the body of the heap. There is evidence that the aerial ropeway tip evolved in three phases and that the small variations in material properties are more readily attributable to these stages of development, rather than being a consequence of systematic degradation with the age of the spoil. Statistical treatment of consolidated-drained triaxial data and comparison with 'fabricated' samples (made up in the laboratory) of unweathered parental rock-types from underground imply that the shear strength of the tip samples is not changing with time. The zone of instability within which superficial movements can occur is considered to be of the same order as the depth of the erosional run-off channels, namely 3 m. Permeability tests, together with the chemistry of the groundwater show that there is restricted water movement through the body of the tip. The detailed nature of the investigations has facilitated certain preliminary conclusions to be drawn about the representability of samples.


Abstract At the turn of the 20th century New Zealand's newspapers were filled with advertising material offering information on a wide variety of products. Among these advertisements were those for alcohol, a commodity which the advertisements claimed to have multiple benefits, including those of a restorative and curative nature. This thesis will examine how two product groups, alcoholic beverages claiming medicinal value, and patent medicines containing alcohol, were advertised in selected New Zealand newspapers and magazines during the years 1900-1945.  The advertising of these two groups was, in many ways, similar. Both used evocative text and images, with the images changing from drawn illustrations to photographs, and both targeted groups, linking these to specific drinks. For example, tonic wine advertising was aimed at women suffering from psychological distress, while beer and spirit advertisements targeted men and sporting codes, and patent medicine advertisements were designed to attract mothers and those suffering from respiratory illnesses. While both alcohol and patent medicines were subject to legislation this was not always effective. The Quackery Act 1908, which should have impacted on both alcohol and patent medicine advertising had no effect on either group. Patent medicine advertisers however, responded to the Physical Welfare Recreation Act 1937, and the Social Welfare Act 1938 with images of active, healthy children. The Medical Advertisements Act 1942 impacted immediately on alcohol advertising. but was not as successful with patent medicines.  Both groups had significant changes affecting their advertising. For example, patent medicine advertising was dramatically altered by the discovery of vitamins. This, to a large extent, moved the impetus of many of these advertisements from illness to health. Two factors influenced alcohol advertising: the first being Prohibition Referenda which saw the emergence of advertising focused on placing alcohol in the household medicine chest. This highlighted the use of alcohol as a commodity commonly used in the home for medical and other emergencies and these advertisements informed readers of what could be lost if prohibition were passed. The second, and most significant change came about with the Medical Advertisements Act 1942 when any mention of cure or relief became unlawful.


Single-projection iterative reconstruction allows the use of high overrelaxation parameters which can be determined by postulating maximum increase of image quality during an iteration step. Further speeding is achieved if maximum increase of quality is postulated during two or more steps. This postulate leads to high initial overrelaxation values which drop down during the following steps. The use of parameters obtained by optimization during two steps requires about half the number of iteration steps compared to one-step parameters. Estimates are used to find the optimum parameters rapidly. Optimization within three or more steps provides only minor convergence improvement, but it demonstrates that different combinations of parameters may achieve images of similar quality. It follows that parameters derived from one data set may be widely used for other data. However, the optimizing procedure is expected to be helpful if data from new equipment or with new characteristics have to be reconstructed. Especially in three-dimensional iterative reconstruction, rapid convergence using high initial overrelaxation is important.


The influence of gate-oxide reliability on common-source amplifiers with diode-connected active load is investigated with the nonstacked and stacked structures under analog application in a 130-nm low-voltage CMOS process. The test conditions of this work include the dc stress, ac stress with dc offset, and large-signal transition stress under different frequencies and signals. After overstresses, the small-signal parameters, such as small-signal gain, unity-gain frequency, phase margin, and output dc voltage levels, are measured to verify the impact of gate-oxide reliability on circuit performances of the common-source amplifiers with diode-connected active load. The small-signal parameters of the common-source amplifier with the nonstacked diode-connected active-load structure are strongly degraded than that with the stacked diode-connected active-load structure due to a gate-oxide breakdown under analog and digital applications. The common-source amplifiers with diode-connected active load are not functionally operational under digital application due to the gate-oxide breakdown. The impact of soft and hard gate-oxide breakdowns on the common-source amplifiers with nonstacked and stacked diode-connected active-load structures has been analyzed and discussed. The hard breakdown has more serious impact on the common-source amplifiers with diode-connected active load.


Floating Solar Chimney (FSC) technology is a low cost alternative technology to solar updraft tower technology which is using concrete solar chimneys. Floating Solar Chimneys are lighter as air fabric structures and can be as high as 700m, giving to their respective power plants efficiency up to 0.85 %. The axial shrouded air turbines of the FSC Power Plants can be connected through proper gear boxes to four-pole to eight-pole doubly fed induction generators, connected though appropriate transformers to the electric grid. Another option, is to connect the air turbines straightforward to multi-pole synchronous generators that will be connected to the electric grid through proper AC to AC converters and electric transformers. FSC technology characteristics in combination with doubly fed induction or multi-pole synchronous generators, leads to the optimum schema in order to convert the maximum of the mechanical energy of the air turbines of the FSC Power Plants to electricity, which is transferred to the electric grid. However in order this to be achieved, special control systems is necessary to be applied to the AC to AC converter.


Recently, surgical instruments and imaging technology in ophthalmology have shown a great improvement. However, advances in the field of the operating microscope technology still remained unchanged with the various limitations for the surgeons. Invention of optical coherence tomography (OCT) led to a revolution in the diagnosis and monitoring of numerous anterior and posterior segment pathologies. Recently, OCT has been introduced into the operating room with an impact on the surgeons. In this chapter, we review the evolution of OCT for intraoperative use with its feasibility, surgical impacts, and limitations.


Most client-side applications running on multicore processors are likely to be irregular programs that deal with complex, pointerbased data structures such as large sparse graphs and trees. However, we understand very little about the nature of parallelism in irregular algorithms, let alone how to exploit it effectively on multicore processors. In this paper, we show that, although the behavior of irregular algorithms can be very complex, many of them have a generalized data-parallelism that we call amorphous data-parallelism. The algorithms in our study come from a variety of important disciplines such as data-mining, AI, compilers, networks, and scientific computing. We also argue that these algorithms can be divided naturally into a small number of categories, and that this categorization provides a lot of insight into their behavior. Finally, we discuss how these insights should guide programming language support and parallel system implementation for irregular algorithms.


Pain is a complex symptom, with implications regarding biological, psychological,social and spiritual factors (the concept of Total Pain). Bone metastasis are constant presence in the evolution of numerous cancers, sometimes affecting over 50% of patients(breast, prostate cancer). The presence of the primary bone tumour or of the bone metastasis is associated with skeletal related events (SREs) - pathologic fracture, spinal cord compression, necessity for surgery or radiation to bone (for pain or impending fracture). This last indication is the subject of this study. In this article there are investigated descriptive and observational studies which present information regardin the role and importance of radiotherapy, with or without radioisotopes, in controlling pain of patiens with primary bone cancer or bone metastasis. A special attention is offered to Quality of Life(QOL) of these patients. (Because of economic reasons, we used only free acess data bases.)


Due to the emergence of social media, there is a paradigm shift in the area of information production, processing and consumption. Hence, investigation in the utilization of open social media data is a relevant research topic. The openness of data, social media data, enables innovation and societal value creation. Social media analytics is an evolving research domain with interdisciplinary methods that are common in data mining such as text mining, social network analysis, trend analysis, and sentiment analysis. Also, social media analytics deals with development and evaluation of frameworks and informatics tools to process noisy and unstructured social media data. On the other hand, Internet of Things (IoT) enables the utilization of digital artifacts with well-established solutions and allows things to be connected regardless of location and time. However, a literature review about social media analytics and IoT integration is missing. In this paper, we conducted a systematic literature review of social media analytics and IoT integration. The literature review indicates that there are fewer research works done in the area of social media analytics and IoT compared to Data Mining and IoT. This paper facilitates discussion and elicits research potentials in social media analytics and IoT integration.


Although prophylactic antibiotics are used frequently on women undergoing pelvic surgery, including cesarean section, they should be reserved for patients who have a significant risk of infection. Among such patients are those who have undergone vaginal hysterectomy or cesarean section after having been in labor with ruptured membranes. Prophylaxis should be limited to one to three doses of antibiotic, with the newer broad-spectrum antibiotics and combination antimicrobial agents reserved for more serious, established infections.


Abstract of a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree ofM.P.R & T.M.of a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree ofM.P.R & T.M. A CITY FOR ALL SEASONS A CASE STUDY OF URBAN PLACE PROMOTION by Andrea Schollmann Promoting cities as tourism de~tinations is seen as a way to enable growth. This promotion involves the projection of selective imagery to specific target groups and often includes the physical reshaping of places to fit a promotable image. Attempts to understand these processes have often focused on one of two approaches: a global perspective stressing the consumptive nature of the tourist gaze and the resultant commodification of place at the local level; and a local perspective emphasising difference and uniqueness. My thesis outlines an investigation into the promotion of the city of Christchurch, New Zealand. I found that local place promotional messages are a product of both global economic forces, which stimulate the growth of tourism, and a local search for identity. The local 'sense of place', as constructed in place promotional imagery, is constantly reviewed and reflects changing social relationships in place and through time. Christchurch, therefore, is not simply promoted in the image of tourism with, as it is often claimed, the inevitable commodification of place and destruction of meaning. Local claims to uniqueness are an expression of the current social relationships in place, which construct selective histories of the past based on ideas of the present that are linked to a search for identity at both local and national levels.


The Northern Apennines (NA) orogenic wedge formed during Oligocene‐Miocene convergence and westward subduction of Adria beneath the European Plate. Extension ensued in the Mid‐Late Miocene in response to Adria roll‐back, causing opening of the back‐arc Northern Tyrrhenian Sea. Whether extension continues uninterrupted since the Mid‐Late Miocene or it was punctuated by short‐lived compressional events, remains, however, uncertain. We used the K‐Ar method to date a set of brittle‐ductile and brittle deformation zones from the Island of Elba to contribute to this debate. We dated the low‐angle Zuccale Fault (ZF), the Capo Norsi‐Monte Arco Thrust (CN‐MAT), and the Calanchiole Shear Zone (CSZ). The CN‐MAT and CSZ are moderately west dipping, top‐to‐the‐east thrusts in the immediate footwall of the ZF. The CSZ slipped 6.14 ± 0.64 Ma (<0.1 μm fraction) and the CN‐MAT 4.90 ± 0.27 Ma ago (<0.4 μm fraction). The ZF, although cutting the two other faults, yielded an older age of 7.58 ± 0.11 Ma (<0.1 μm fraction). The ZF gouge, however, contains an illitic detrital contaminant from the Paleozoic age flysch deformed in its hanging wall and the age thus is a maximum faulting age. Removal of ~1% of a 300‐Ma‐old contaminant brings the ZF faulting age to <4.90 Ma. Our results provide the first direct dating of brittle deformation in the Apennines, constraining Late Miocene‐Early Pliocene regional compression. They call for a refinement of current NA geodynamic models in the framework of the Northern Tyrrhenian Sea extension.


We propose a method to reconstruct 3D face model from a single face-frontal shading image based on a database of the original 3D face shapes which are created according to anatomical basis of the human head. In the proposed method, we reconstruct the 3D shape of the face from the input shading image by estimating small number of eigenvalues taken by principal component analysis (PCA) of the anatomical database of the head, rather than directly recovering the shape from the input shading image. The eigenvalues are estimated based on the optimization of the error value computed by comparing shading information of input image to that of model image created from the shape represented by the eigenvalues. For evaluating the effectiveness, we reconstruct various face shapes from single shading images of the objects based on the proposed method. The reconstructed shape for a statue of head with the average shape of the databases provides an error evaluation, which is 2.6 mm in average. This is sufficiently accurate for the future applications, such as on-line order-made of face-wearing products


Linkage has traditionally been identified as a central function of legislatures. Given the Parliament's initial institutional preeminence in Hungary after 1990 and underdeveloped linkages through organized interests or stable and cohesive parties, the linkage function of elected representatives was of special importance. This article examines the pattern of MP constituency linkage in the first democratically elected Hungarian Parliament (1990), the political context within which this pattern was established, and the conceptions MPs held of their representative focus.


The Swedish alcohol market has for many years been in the hands of the government. The question of the monopoly, its being or not being, has for a long time engaged both Swedish citizens and politicians. Since joining the European Union it has also been on the European agenda, trying to adapt Sweden to the more liberal alcohol politic in Europe. The suppliers find themselves acting on a completely different market than a market based on free competition. The suppliers are faced with one retail channel to the stores which creates dependence and uneven power balance towards the retailer. In addition to this, their marketing activities are strictly limited due to the laws and claims. Corporate Social Responsibility is required goals given from the retailer upon the suppliers. The retailer is also set with strict term and rules from the government and has to gain the Swedish citizens approval in order to maintain their position as the only distribution channel. The supplier, primarily acting on the purpose of selling products and increasing the profit, differ from the retailer who mainly aim to limit and regulate the sales of alcohol. In this difficult market a relationship between the supplier and the distributor is being built up and nourished. The relationship in the supply chain is based on four factors; trust, cooperation, commitment and conflict. These different factors are shaping and affecting the relationship between the supplier and the retailer. The diverse aims of these two organizations, together with the regulations of the market and the dependency between each other, have an effect and shape the relationship. The analyses argue that equal goals can lead to an increased commitment between the supplier and retailer. Further on the members of the supply chains appear to use problem solving to resolve a conflict to be able to maintain good cooperation and increase trust in the relationship. The conclusion is that the retailer possesses the power in the relationship towards the supplier. All the relationship factors are important in this relationship but trust is required in order to obtain cooperation and commitment. Trust is also vital when it comes to solving a conflict.


In Rhizobium leguminosarum bv. viciae, quorum‐sensing is regulated by CinR, which induces the cinIS operon. CinI synthesizes an AHL, whereas CinS inactivates PraR, a repressor. Mutation of praR enhanced biofilms in vitro. We developed a light (lux)‐dependent assay of rhizobial attachment to roots and demonstrated that mutation of praR increased biofilms on pea roots. The praR mutant out‐competed wild‐type for infection of pea nodules in mixed inoculations. Analysis of gene expression by microarrays and promoter fusions revealed that PraR represses its own transcription and mutation of praR increased expression of several genes including those encoding secreted proteins (the adhesins RapA2, RapB and RapC, two cadherins and the glycanase PlyB), the polysaccharide regulator RosR, and another protein similar to PraR. PraR bound to the promoters of several of these genes indicating direct repression. Mutations in rapA2, rapB, rapC, plyB, the cadherins or rosR did not affect the enhanced root attachment or nodule competitiveness of the praR mutant. However combinations of mutations in rapA, rapB and rapC abolished the enhanced attachment and nodule competitiveness. We conclude that relief of PraR‐mediated repression determines a lifestyle switch allowing the expression of genes that are important for biofilm formation on roots and the subsequent initiation of infection of legume roots.


The JERICO European research infrastructure (RI) is integrating several platform types i.e. fixed buoys, piles, moorings, drifters, Ferryboxes, gliders, HF radars, coastal cable observatories and the associated technologies dedicated to the observation and monitoring of the European coastal seas. The infrastructure is to serve both the implementation of European marine policies and the elucidation of key scientific questions through dedicated observation and monitoring plans. It includes observations of the physical, chemical and biological compartments and aims at a better integration of marine biology with physical and chemical oceanology, through specific interactions with other relevant ocean observing systems that provide complementary observations. The first phase of the implementation of JERICO encompasses setting up, coordination and harmonization, and were performed between 2011 and 2015 in the framework of FP7-JERICO (www.jerico-fp7.eu), a 4-year long infrastructure project co-funded by the European Commission, with 27 partners from 17 European countries under the coordination of IFREMER. The next 4-year phase is to be carried out through the H2020-JERICO-NEXT European project, starting in 2015 and involving 33 scientific and industrial partners. The main objective of the JERICO consortium is to establish a common approach for a pan-European coastal marine observatory network. This is a dynamic and long-lasting effort necessitating continuous work towards harmonization (i.e. design, operation, and maintenance), evolution and extension of the current systems as well as the delivery of data and products to the users. Success relies on a good coordination and follow-up between FP7-JERICO and JERICO-NEXT, and onwards, at both hardware and software levels. More specifically, the existing network and its possible evolution are continuously assessed taking in account the evolution of the user needs, the harmonization effort to be driven, the existing sensors and technologies, their upgrades for integration on dedicated platforms, also the accompanying of under development sensors and/or systems with involvement of providers and stakeholders when possible. Nevertheless, a major issue relates to the sustainability of the infrastructure, both at economical and governance levels, and the capability in integrating the latest technology while preserving the scientific value of the data. This paper briefly summarizes the work carried out in FP7-JERICO project and drafts strategic aspects of the JERICO-RI sustainability on the long-term. s. We will present the 6 priority scientific areas that are the drivers of JERICO-NEXT scientific strategy and the subsequent technology development to be implemented through dedicated Joint Research Activity Projects. Emphasis is put on how the consortium intends to address long term financial and legal governance structures for the sustainable implementation of JERICO-NEXT infrastructures, as well as access to the infrastructure and associated services and link to stakeholders such as relevant funding agencies and SMEs.


In Scotland, life expectancy and health outcomes are strongly tied to socioeconomic status. Specifically, socioeconomically deprived areas suffer disproportionately from high levels of premature multimorbidity and mortality. To tackle these inequalities in health, challenges in the most deprived areas must be addressed. One avenue that merits attention is the potential role of general medical practitioners (GPs) in helping to address health inequalities, particularly due to their long-term presence in deprived communities, their role in improving patient and population health, and their potential advocacy role on behalf of their patients. GPs can be seen as what Lipsky calls 'street-level bureaucrats' due to their considerable autonomy in the decisions they make surrounding individual patient needs, yet practising under the bureaucratic structure of the NHS. While previous research has examined the applicability of Lipsky's framework to the role of GPs, there has been very little research exploring how GPs negotiate between the multiple identities in their work, how GPs 'socially construct' their patients, how GPs view their potential role as 'advocate', and what this means in terms of the contribution of GPs to addressing existing inequalities in health.

Using semi-structured interviews, this study explored the experience and views of 24 GPs working in some of Scotland's most deprived practices to understand how they might combat this growing health divide via the mitigation (and potential prevention) of existing health inequalities. Participants were selected based on several criteria including practice deprivation level and their individual involvement in the Deep End project, which is an informal network comprising the 100 most deprived general practices in Scotland. The research focused on understanding GPs' perceptions of their work including its broader implications, within their practice, the communities within which they practise, and the health system as a whole.

The concept of street-level bureaucracy proved to be useful in understanding GPs' frontline work and how they negotiate dilemmas. However, this research demonstrated the need to look beyond Lipsky's framework in order to understand how GPs reconcile their multiple identities, including advocate and manager. As a result, the term 'street-level professional' is offered to capture more fully the multiple identities which GPs inhabit and to explain how GPs' elite status positions them to engage in political and policy advocacy. This study also provides evidence that GPs' social constructions of patients are linked not only to how GPs conceptualise the causes of health inequalities, but also to how they view their role in tackling them. In line with this, the interviews established that many GPs felt they could make a difference through advocacy efforts at individual, community and policy/political levels. Furthermore, the study draws attention to the importance of practitioner-led groups—such as the Deep End project—in supporting GPs' efforts and providing a platform for their advocacy.

Within this study, a range of GPs' views have been explored based on the sample. While it is unclear how common these views are amongst GPs in general, the study revealed that there is considerable scope for 'political GPs' who choose to exercise discretion in their communities and beyond. Consequently, GPs working in deprived areas should be encouraged to use their professional status and political clout not only to strengthen local communities, but also to advocate for policy change that might potentially affect the degree of disadvantage of their patients, and levels of social and health inequalities more generally.


Background High rates of cannabis and illicit drug use are experienced by young people during the final stages of neurodevelopment (aged 15-24 years), a period characterized by high neuroplasticity. Frequent drug use during this time may interfere with neurophysiological and neuropsychological development pathways, potentially leading to ongoing unfavorable neuroadaptations. The dose-response relationship between illicit drug use, exposure, and individual neurodevelopmental variation is unknown but salient with global shifts in the legal landscape and increasingly liberal attitudes and perceptions of the harm caused by cannabis and illicit drugs. Objective This systematic review aims to synthesize longitudinal studies that investigate the effects of illicit drug use on structural, functional, and cognitive brain domains in individuals under the neural age of adulthood (25 years). This protocol outlines prospective methods that will facilitate an exhaustive review of the literature exploring pre- and post-drug use brain abnormalities arising during neurodevelopment. Methods Five electronic databases (Medline, Embase, PsycINFO, ProQuest Central, and Web of Science) will be systematically searched between 1990 and 2019. The search terms will be a combination of MeSH (Medical Subject Headings), with keywords adapted to each database. Study reporting will follow the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, and if relevant, study quality will be assessed using the Grades of Recommendation, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) approach. Eligible studies are those that sampled youth exposed to cannabis or illicit drugs and employed neurophysiological or neuropsychological assessment techniques. Studies will be excluded if participants had been clinically diagnosed with any psychiatric, neurological, or pharmacological condition. Results This is an ongoing review. As of February 2020, papers are in full-text screening, with results predicted to be complete by July 2020. Conclusions Integrating data collected on the three brain domains will enable an assessment of the links between structural, functional, and cognitive brain health across individuals and may support the early detection and prevention of neurodevelopmental harm. Trial Registration PROSPERO CRD42020151442; https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=151442 International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID) PRR1-10.2196/18349


Integration in construction projects implies alignment of both structural arrangements and operational mechanisms, in order to effectively coordinate and streamline the combined efforts of various interacting parties, for improved project outcomes. Appropriate use of relational contracting (RC) principles may help achieve such integration. As such, the aims of the reported study are to examine the relative usefulness of various potential strategies and factors, to provide suitable contractual and noncontractual incentives, for building a RC culture, and nurturing effective teamwork in construction. Results from statistical analyses of 83 questionnaire responses from Hong Kong are presented. These results attribute various degrees of importance to different factors and strategies, both for RC and teamworking. The outcomes also suggest the need for a highly interactive and consolidated approach, both for propagating RC and building integrated project teams. It is observed that trust and trust based operational and contractual arrangements can effectively provide the required incentives, for implementing various RC-based working arrangements in construction. These should extend to assessing "relational" attributes during team selection, under cliental initiative and top management support. Outcomes of this study are expected to benefit both industry practitioners and researchers, in exploring, designing, and implementing suitable RC-based working arrangements.


Nanocrystalline TiO2 deposited on conducting glass plates is shown to be an excellent material for preconcentration of silver and mercury, via photochemical reaction, prior to their detection by anodic stripping voltammetry (ASV). During the first stage of growth in the photoreduction of silver or mercury, 3D nuclei are formed on the TiO2 film. As the deposition proceeds micrometer size agglomerates grow on the surface. The conical morphology of the silver nuclei grown on a (110) rutile single crystal in the initial stages of growth suggests that there is a preferential deposition of silver at the centre of the growing nuclei. When the nuclei size reach a critical value (ca. 400 nm diameter, 40 nm height) the morphology changes to a globular shape without any preferential site for deposition on the surface of the silver nucleus. It was observed that micromolar concentrations of silver or mercury can be detected by anodic stripping voltammetry and relatively large amounts of these metals (micrometer scale nuclei) can be loaded on the nanocrystalline TiO2 film surface. The latter opens the possibility of analytical applications of nanocrystalline TiO2 electrodes for the selective detection of silver or mercury via photochemical anodic stripping voltammetry.


The present short note reports the finding of five Nudipleura species: one (Taringa cf. telopia) new for the Mediterranean, two (Doto maculata and Okenia longiductis) new for Sicily, one (Berthella stellata) new for the central-eastern coast of Sicily and, finally, a new record of Taringa tritorquis for the same area. For each species, information on date and site of finding, external morphology, taxonomic history, previous reports and remarks, are discussed. The finding of these species could depend on two different reasons: 1) the examined areas are transit zones for several ships which could transport the veligers or/and juvenile stages through fouling or ballast water; 2) since in these areas the marine Heterobranchia fauna has been poorly studied, many of the found species could have been overlooked until now. This work highlights the importance of a continuous monitoring to expand and deepen the knowledge of marine Heterobranchia fauna.


Social economics has long been concerned with the effects on human societies of market-coordinated processes of economic innovation. But the social economy also causes invention and innovation, an aspect that has received less attention. This article reviews three new approaches to the study of the growth of knowledge in economic systems as driven expressly by sociocultural mechanisms and dynamics. The first are so-called "social network markets" and "novelty bundling markets". The second extends from "knowledge commons" to "innovation commons". The third is a sociocultural semiotic process of group dynamics. These models represent different ways the social economy generates newness and produces innovation.


BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE
Polyherbal formulations available with a wide range of indications like protective to liver, appetite and growth promoters, gastrointestinal and hepatic regulator, as treatment for hepatic dysfunction, for hepatic regeneration as well as liver stimulant and tonic. Despite the widespread use, there is a lack of scientific evidence on their efficacy and safety. This study was undertaken to evaluate the hepatoprotective activity of six commercially available formulations, namely Liv 52, Livergen, Livokin, Octogen, Stimuliv and Tefroliv in acute liver toxicity in mice model induced by paracetamol (PCM).

METHODS
Swiss albino mice of either sex were used, divided in 28 groups with six in each group. The dose of the polyherbal formulations was calculated from human dose (20 ml/day) using a standard conversion table. They were given as pretreatment (2.60 ml/kg/day) for 7 days by oral route twice a day prior to PCM administration. Hepatotoxicity was induced by administering a single oral dose of PCM (500 mg/kg bw) on day 8. The study parameters were conducted on day 9. The biochemical parameters included liver enzyme levels alanine tranaminases (ALT), aspartate transaminases (AST) and alkaline phosphatase (ALP). The pharmacological and pathological parameters were phenobarbitone sleeping time and macroscopic and microscopic changes of liver tissues respectively.

RESULTS
PCM toxicity significantly increased ALT, AST and ALP (321.00 +/- 87.93, 273.17 +/- 45.68, 257.50 +/- 17.64 IU/l vs normal control, 33.33 +/- 0.61, 89.33 +/- 9.50, 152.17 +/- 11.40 IU/l respectively, P<0.05), prolonged phenobarbitone induced sleeping time (from 277.50 +/- 8.04 min to 335.83 +/- 7.00 min, P<0.05). When PCM higher dose (1g/kg p.o. single dose) was used, the liver tissue, in macroscopic appearance, showed extensive necrosis associated with haemorrhages. Low dose (500 mg/kg p.o. single dose) showed punctate haemorrhagic necrosis of liver tissue. In the microscopic studies, PCM induced toxicity showed haemorrhages, fatty changes and necrosis. The pretreatment in low doses (2.6 ml/kg/day) with liquid formulations of Liv 52 and Livergen reversed the PCM induced liver toxicity. At higher doses (5.2 ml/ kg/day), all the six herbal formulations conclusively showed marked beneficial effects in the studied pharmacological, biochemical and histological parameters.

INTERPRETATION & CONCLUSION
The present findings demonstrated the efficacy of polyherbal liquid formulations at two dose levels in PCM induced hepatotoxicity in mice. However, it suggests that a dose adjustment may be necessary to optimize the effects in clinical settings.


We reveal the fundamental relation between linear photonic crystal symmetries and the local polarization states of its Bloch modes, in particular the location and nature of polarization singularities as established by rigorous group theoretic analysis, encompassing the full system symmetry. This is illustrated with the fundamental transverse electric mode of a two-dimensional hexagonal photonic crystal, in the vanishing contrast limit and at the K point. For general Wyckoff positions within the fundamental domain, the transformation of a local polarization state is determined by the nature of the symmetry operations that map to members of its crystallographic orbit. In particular, the site symmetries that correspond to specific Wyckoff positions constrain the local polarization state to singular character--circular, linear or disclination. Moreover, through the application of a local symmetry transformation relation, and the group's character table, the precise natures of the singularities may be determined from self-consistency arguments.


The design of an optimal road pricing scheme is not a trivial problem. Following the Dutch government's kilometer charge plans, this paper focuses on the optimization of link based toll levels differentiated in space and time. The optimal toll level design problem is formulated as a bi-level mathematical program. In the upper level we minimize an object function, e.g. the average travel time in the network, using a fixed number of price categories. At the lower level a dynamic traffic assignment model is used to determine the effects of differentiated road pricing schemes on the traffic system. Focus of the paper is on the upper-level where optimal toll levels are approximated. In the optimization procedure different variants of a pattern search algorithm are tested in a case study. Inspection of the solution space shows that many local minima exist, so the selection of the initial solution becomes important. In the case study however it appears that in all local minima the value of the objective function is almost the same, indicating the fact that many different toll schemes result in the same average travel time. The case study is also used to test the performance of the different variants of the pattern search algorithm. It appears that it is beneficial to change more variables at a time and to use a memory to remember where improvement of the objective function has been made.


Government regulation is often necessary, sometimes in heavy doses, for private markets to function effectively. This Article presents three case studies from the banking industry to support this thesis. The first case study, the deregulation of Savings and Loans in the early 1980s, is a good example of how deregulation can produce disastrous results and market failures. The second case study examines an EPA regulation which allows banks to avoid liability when demanding that borrowers comply with environmental laws-a socially optimal result. The third study considers the regulation of deposit insurance. Deposit insurance and its regulation prevents bank runs and panics, inherent problems of depository institutions. In the United States, the most effective regulation of deposit insurance comes at the federal level. It is a system that heavily regulates insured banks. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation requires member banks to maintain a minimum level of reserves, regulates bank closure, and sets minimum capital requirements. Deposit insurance represents beneficial government regulation. Taken together, these banking regulation case studies are prime examples of how government regulation is sometimes necessary for effective markets.


The authors report the results of a survey on schistosomiasis in the zone of Ziga (Burkina Faso) where a dam is going to be built. They examined 438 children aged from 7 to 15 years in 5 villages. The appraisal of macroscopic or microscopic hematuria, urine filtration, stool analysis and ultrasonographic examination made possible the assessment of the prevalence and severity of both schistosomiasis. The area was hyperendemic for urinary schistosomiasis. The general prevalence of S. haematobium was higher than 46% and 55% of the children presented at least one lesion of the bladder and 2% of hydronephrosis at ultrasonography. Intestinal schistosomiasis was not observed although few cases have been described in the regional hospital and intermediate host snails have been collected in the area. A surveillance of schistosomiasis, based on school surveys, was strongly recommended in the dam area.


Cloud computing has transformed the way businesses manage their IT resources. By uploading IT solution to the cloud, businesses are assured that computational power and storage capacity are available on demand. This makes cloud computing the next phase in the internet's evolution. Businesses that use Cloud Service Providers CSPs tend to have Service-Level Agreements SLAs, which act as a contract and define the level of expected service from the CSP, including availability, performance and security. Third Party Auditors TPAs have been suggested by recent research as a means to monitor CSPs. While the use of TPAs may seem sufficient, this paper shows a method where a CSP may deceive the SLA to reduce their cost and become more competitive. The CSP may achieve that while avoiding detection by TPAs. This paper describes two methods that enable CSPs to deceive cloud users. The simulation described in this paper shows that CSPs may save considerable amounts of money. The paper also presents a crowdsourced TPA model that lays the foundation for a solution to the problem. Our model can help TPAs to monitor CSPs and consequently detect any divergence from stated SLAs.


In April 2003, a Hedge Fund investor organization undertook the task of developing standards and best practices for hedge fund managers from the perspective of hedge fund investors. Their efforts resulted in a report with suggestions and recommendations on various aspects of portfolio and risk management such as valuation procedures, disclosure and transparency, risk monitoring, lockups and conflicts among others. The report is divided into two parts. This first part covers ethics, management policies, disclosure and transparency, valuation policies and procedures, risk monitoring and marketing and communications. The second part of the report which will be featured in the next issue and covers regulation, compliance and documentation, fees, conflicts of interest and strategy change.


Summarization is a process to select important information from a source text.
Summarizing strategies are the core of the cognitive processes involved in the
summarization activity. Summarizing strategies include a set of conscious tasks that are
used to determine important information and extract the main idea of a source text.
In this research project, we conducted a study on students' summaries. The findings of
the study show that, there is a strong relationship between the summary writing
proficiency of students and the summarizing strategies that they used. We then develop
a new algorithm to address the summarizing strategies identification problem. The
algorithm simulates two important tasks that are frequently used by the human experts
to identify summarizing strategies used to produce the summary sentences: 1) sentences
relevance identification; and 2) summarizing strategies identification.
The sentences relevance identification module uses a statistical based approach such as
vector space model (VSM) to represent sentences and compute similarity between the
source sentences and the summary sentences using the cosine similarity measure. It then
integrates both the semantic and syntactic similarity measures using a linear equation to
capture the meaning in comparison between two sentences. It aims to distinguish the
meaning of two sentences, when two sentences have same surface or share the similar
bag-of-words (BOW), while their meaning is different. The module also employed a
word semantic similarity measuring method to overcome vocabulary mismatch problem
in sentence comparison. The method bridges the lexical gaps for semantically similar
contexts that are expressed in a different wording. In addition, the sentences relevance
identification module requires some degree of linguistic pre-processing, including part
of speech tagging (POS), word stemming and stop-words removal.
iii
The summarizing strategies identification module relies on a set of heuristic rules,
statistical and linguistic methods such as position-based method, title-based method,
cue-phrase method and word-frequency method to identify the summarizing strategies
employed by students.
To evaluate the algorithm, we conducted two experiments. In the first experiment, we
examine the functionality of the system, whether the system is able to identify the
summarizing strategies used by students in summary writing. The result for the first
experiment shows that the system is able to identify some of summarizing strategies
which are deletion, sentence combination, paraphrase and topic sentence selection. The
system is also able to detect copy- verbatim strategy, the most commonly strategy used
by students. Besides than these strategies, there are four methods used in topic sentence
selection strategy which can also be identified by the system. They are 1) cue method;
2) title method; 3) keyword method; and 4) location method. In the second experiment,
we want to measure the performance of the algorithm against human judgment to
identify the summarizing strategies using the precision, recall, F-measure score and
accuracy rate. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm achieved
acceptable results in comparison to human judgment. The algorithm achieved an
average of 87% precision, 83% of recall, 85% of F-score and 82% of accuracy rate.


Background/Objectives: Literature review has been conducted in the area of Supply Chain Management (SCM) to comprehend the various Supply Chain Management Practices (SCMPs), adopted by firms and how these can impact the performance of the organization and thus be a source of competitive advantage to the firm. Additionally, the SCMPs, which are particularly relevant for the retail sector, were identified and a conceptual retail supply chain model was proposed for further validation. Methods/Statistical Analysis: A total of 100 selected refereed journal articles were systematically studied. Findings: A couple of key findings emerged; there are several research articles on SCM in the manufacturing sector, but the field is relatively new with reference to the Retail-SCM. The literature review aids to develop an understanding of the relevant Retail-SCMPs which have an impact on SCP and FP. The proposed conceptual model can then be validated through multivariate data analysis. Applications/Improvements: The findings and subsequent methodological discussions aim at providing practical guidance to Retail-SCM researchers and practioners.


This case study examines the history and current state of gendered harassment in the U.S. Forest Service (USFS). Starting with the Bernardi Consent Decree in 1979 and the Donnelly Consent Decree two decades later, the USFS aimed to make its work environment more hospitable to women and other minority employee groups. However, the service has largely failed at this aim, and female employees are routinely harassed and abused, often staying silent for fear of retaliation from male coworkers or supervisors. After exploring the history of these attacks and the present working conditions for minority employees of the USFS, this case examines possible solutions, including legal intervention and cultural shifts. The problems faced by the USFS are not unique to the forestry industry. As sexual assault and harassment gain more media prominence and allegations lead to huge public relations issues for industries across the board, these issues are on the forefront of cultural dialogue. By examining varied cases of gendered discrimination, conclusions can be drawn about what does and doesn't work in the fight against sexual misconduct.


With an estimated wind turbine service life of 20-25 years, it is evident that in the coming years, an increasing number of wind farm owners will have to make a decision between decommissioning and repowering their wind farms. Even though repowering is underlined with a highly complex decision making process, a review of the literature suggests that it is mainly regarded as an engineering feat with a lack of discussion in the strategic and project management context.The objective of this thesis is to provide a framework that demonstrates the applicability of fundamental strategic and project management concepts on repowering and present a new perspective on this activity with a relatively short and promising history. In an effort to accomplish this, an extensive literature review analyzed different aspects of repowering through the lenses of strategic and project management. These concepts were then combined into the Repowering Strategic Project Management (RSPM) framework to guide the decision maker in selecting and implementing the optimal repowering strategy by establishing a repowering project early in the existing wind farm's operational life.The RSPM framework presents a step-by-step guidance tool that demonstrates the process from envisioning an optimal end of service life (EOSL) solution to the repowering execution. In an effort to verify its suitability, the framework has been implemented, demonstrating the wide range of aspects the decision maker has to take into consideration suggesting that an early development of the repowering strategy and its corresponding project could help the owner to repower the wind farm in the most time-efficient manner. Lastly, while the thesis did not emphasize the evaluation and selection of strategy, the implementation of the RSPM framework provided guidelines for these tasks.


A comprehensive introduction to the fundamental aspects of surface chirality, covering both chemical and physical consequences Written by a leading expert in the field, Chirality at Solid Surfaces offers an introduction to the concept of chirality at surfaces, starting from the foundation of chirality in isolated molecules and bulk systems. Fundamental properties such as surface energy and surface stress are then linked to a universal systematization of surface structure and symmetry. The author includes key examples of surface chemistry and physics, such as the interplay between adsorbate and substrate chirality, amplification of chirality, chiral catalysis, and the influence of surface chirality upon optical and magnetic phenomena. The book also explores the chirality apparent in the electronic structure of graphene, topological insulators and half-metallic materials. This important reference: Provides an introduction to the fundamental concept of chirality Contains discussions of the chemical and physical consequences of surface chirality, including magnetic, electronic and optical properties in addition to molecular properties Offers an account of the most current research needed to support growth in the field Written for surface scientists, professionals in the field, academics, and students, Chirality at Solid Surfaces is an essential resource that contains an overview of the fundamentals of surface chirality and reviews both the chemical and physical consequences.


This paper outlines a curriculum model for
contemporary programme design for the purpose of embedding educational
innovation and technology within an inter-professional nursing curriculum. It
has been developed from work within the School of Nursing and Midwifery at
Keele University during the re-write of both the nursing and midwifery
curriculum. The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) require approval of all
recordable programmes every five years and as such the school took this review
as an opportunity to explore the curriculum model currently in use and develop
an approach that would facilitate the professional requirements of the
programme alongside the embedding of innovative learning and teaching
methodologies. The model springs from extensive application of contemporary
pedagogy underpinning adult learning, and forces consideration of cognitive
alignment within a multi-modal delivery framework [1]. The model builds upon
the early work of Fowler and Mayes [2] and later work of Bird [3] who explored
the antecedents and underpinning theory for success within online learning
experiences. This model has greater reach; having strategic fit for acontemporary
"technology enhanced learning" application within further and higher education
[4], whilst ensuring the achievement of given professional standards [5].


The novel cyanoguanidine CHS 828 has shown promising antitumor activity in many in vitro and in vivo studies. The long-term 14 days in vitro hollow fiber cultures, where tumor cells from different tumor cell lines were cultured inside semipermeable fibers, were more resistant to CHS 828 and other cytotoxic drugs than the shorter-term 3 days cultures. CHS 828 was generally more effective against haematological than solid tumor cells from both cell lines and patients samples. In vivo, the hollow fibers were implanted into immunocompetent rats and the pharmacokinetics, tumor response and/or toxicity (pharmacodynamics) of CHS 828 were successfully assayed. CHS 828 showed higher activity in this model when a more protracted schedule was used. The quantitative relationships between dose, plasma concentration and response (PK/PD model) developed for CHS 828 explained this phenomenon partly by dose-dependent fraction absorbed and partly by a schedule-dependent pharmacodynamic effect.Modelling of the in vitro CHS 828 and standard cytotoxic drugs concentration-time effect data in different tumor cell types and characterization of pattern of change of the potency and the slope of the concentration-time effect curves were performed. The results suggest two different mechanisms of action for CHS 828 and that CHS 828 cytotoxicity may depend on the schedule used.The NF-kB pathway that regulates the transcription of anti-apoptotic genes proved to be inhibited by CHS 828 in different tumor cell lines and the inhibition was correlated to the cell death induced by this agent. CHS 828 did not seem to induce the NF-kB inhibition by affecting the proteasome activity. The in vitro and in vivo hollow fiber methods were also used successfully to evaluate the new paclitaxel formulation, Pacliex. Pacliex had a similar activity to that of the clinically used formulation Taxol®.


A retrospective survey of outcomes from elective health examinations on amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals in a zoological collection was carried out in order to compare differences between taxa, type of health examination and age of animal, and to quantify whether the benefits of such interventions exceed potential welfare risks to the subjects. Outcomes of 1651 health examinations, including import, pre-export, first and routine health examinations, were recorded and analysed. At least one problem was found in 45.7% of health examinations, with subsequent action (such as treatment, follow-up or further diagnostics) required in just under half of those animals or 21.1% of health examinations overall. A problem was identified in 52.1% of import examinations as opposed to 32.5% of pre-export examinations, and in 52.2% of routine examinations, compared to 33.6% of first examinations. When analysed further by taxon, these differences were not significant for all taxa. In addition, only for mammals was there a significant difference between age groups, with problems significantly more likely to be identified as age increased. A complication occurred during 3% of total health examinations, with complications significantly more likely to have been caused in birds than in mammals and none at all identified in reptiles and amphibians. Almost 97% of the complications caused during bird health examinations were minor wounds resulting from capture for the procedure.  Little has been published previously evaluating the effects of preventative medicine interventions on mortality, morbidity or welfare of zoo animals. This kind of information can be used to make evidence-based decisions on the necessity and frequency of elective health examinations in a particular collection.


The proposition of career well-being concept follows the development trend of boundaryless career era. This concept is based on one's intrinsic emotion and the change of career well-being is closely connected with one's psychological dynamics, but the relevant studies ignore the necessity to analyze and explore its internal mechanism. In the article, it first gives a systematic review of career well-being concept and proposes that this concept has a close connection with time. By analyzing the two relevant concepts of career well-being that are career and subjective well-being, this article points out that career well-being is the result of one's comprehensive feelings towards the past career experience, current career state and future career development. Based on that, it also discusses the relationship between self and career well-being concept, and emphasizes that self is embodied in the career well-being concept. Therefore, the following content starts with the self-discrepancy theory to explore the internal mechanism of career well-being. From the perspective of cognition, emotion, motivation and behavior, it first gives a general discussion on what specific forms people may have when their career well-being is influenced by self-discrepancy. In order to explore the internal mechanism of career well-being concept, it then combines the concept of time with actual self, ideal self and ought self to extend self-discrepancy theory types, and discusses how an individual's career well-being changes under the impact of different self-discrepancy types. There are five main sections. The first one is the discrepancy within each kind of self-state. The discussion is about how the discrepancy in actual self, ideal self and ought self affects career well-being separately, and it relies on two considerations. One is about the feature of time in self-concept and that requires considering the past, present and future self; the other is about the self-contained characteristics of actual self, ideal self and ought self. The second one is actual self-ideal self discrepancy. While exploring the details on how this kind of self-discrepancy affects career well-being, this section focuses on two situations. It involves the discrepancy between actual self and ideal self in the same time period (e.g. present actual self-present ideal self discrepancy) and the discrepancy between actual self and ideal self that situates in distinct time period (e.g. past anticipated self-present ideal self discrepancy). The third one is actual self-ought self discrepancy. The analysis about the impact of actual self-ought self discrepancy is similar to the one related to actual self-ideal self discrepancy. It contains the discrepancy between actual self and ought self in the same time period (e.g. future possible self-future ought self discrepancy) and the discrepancy between actual self and ought self in different time period (e.g. present actual self-future ought self discrepancy). The fourth one is ideal self-ought self discrepancy. Due to the characteristics of these two self states, this section takes the time concept away in the analysis of how the discrepancy between them can influence an individual's career well-being. The fifth one is the discrepancy caused by alternative self. Through taking a reference from Obodaru(2012), this section proposes that alternative self should be considered while discussing the internal mechanism of career well-being concept, as people's imagination towards their self state in the career also plays an important role in affecting their cognition, emotion, motivation and behavior (e.g. the negative emotion regret"). Thus this article enriches the internal mechanism of career well-being concept and compensates to the deficiency of existed studies through extending the self-discrepancy theory. At the end of this article, it also gives prospects to the relevant research fields.


Over six percent of the American population experience homelessness in their lifetime, and poor health is commonplace among individuals experiencing this condition. Homelessness is a risk factor for both acute and chronic diseases; homeless populations experience an age-adjusted mortality rate 3-4 times greater than the general population. In fact, despite the high prevalence of poor health behaviors and the well-documented disparities in health care outcomes among homeless adults, interventions for this population are scarce, likely due to the fact that they are challenging to implement. Consequently, there are few published interventions on diet/physical activity interventions targeting this population to date. Health-eStrides, a novel randomized pilot lifestyle intervention for 32 transitional shelter residents, took place at The Bridge in Dallas, Texas. This paper reports on the lessons learned and approaches for intervening in this vulnerable population. Participants were randomized into either the experimental arm or control arm of the study. The experimental arm included a 4-week shelter-based diet, physical activity intervention, tailored educational newsletters, and supplemental fruits and vegetables; the control arm was not given any additional resources and compensated for completing assessments at the conclusion of the study. 71% of participants reported that the intervention was "extremely/very helpful" for both increasing daily intake of fruits and vegetables and for increasing physical activity. Based on this intervention, this paper discusses barriers and facilitators for lifestyle improvements among homeless adults. This intervention demonstrated the effectiveness of customized lifestyle interventions in improving health care outcomes for homeless adults and affirms the need for more research and innovation on this vulnerable population, especially in terms of long-term and sustainable solutions.


This work is concerned with mRNA processing in mammalian cells and proceeds in two parts. In the first part, I introduce a computational framework for inferring the abundances of mRNA isoforms using high-throughput RNA sequencing data. This framework was applied to study the targets of the ubiquitous splicing factor hnRNP H in human cells. In the second part, I describe an experimental study of the Musashi (hnRNP-like) family of RNA-binding proteins in stem cells and cancer cells, which incorporates computational analyses that rely heavily on the framework developed in part one. In sum, this work provides a computational framework of general use in global analyses of RNA processing and its protein regulators, as well as functional insights into a family of poorly understood RNA-binding proteins. Several related analyses and techniques developed as part of the thesis are described in Appendix A-C. Appendix A describes a study of activity-dependent gene expression and mRNA processing in the mouse olfactory bulb. It uses computational techniques developed in part one of the thesis. Appendix B describes a technique for quantitative visualization of alternative splicing from RNA sequencing data and its integration into a genome browser. Appendix C describes a method for clonal analysis of neural stem cell growth and differentiation in culture using live imaging and 'microdot' plates, developed as part of the work presented in part one of the thesis. Thesis Supervisor: Christopher B. Burge Title: Professor Thesis Supervisor: Rudolf Jaenisch Title: Professor


Artificial enzyme mimetics are a current research interest because natural enzymes bear some serious disadvantages, such as their catalytic activity can be easily inhibited and they can be digested by proteases. A very recently study reported by Yan et al. has proven that Fe(3)O(4) magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) exhibit an intrinsic enzyme mimetic activity similar to that found in natural peroxidases, though MNPs are usually thought to be biological and chemical inert (Gao, L. Z.; Zhuang, J.; Nie, L.; Zhang, J. B.; Zhang, Y.; Gu, N.; Wang, T. H.; Feng, J.; Yang, D. L.; Perrett, S.; Yan, X. Y. Nat. Nanotechnol. 2007, 2, 577-583). In the present work, we just make use of the novel properties of Fe(3)O(4) MNPs as peroxidase mimetics reported by Yan et al. to detect H(2)O(2). The Fe(3)O(4) MNPs were prepared via a coprecipitation method. The as-prepared Fe(3)O(4) MNPs were then used to catalyze the oxidation of a peroxidase substrate 2,2'-azino-bis(3-ethylbenzo-thiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) diammonium salt (ABTS) by H(2)O(2) to the oxidized colored product (see eq 1) which provides a colorimetric detection of H(2)O(2). As low as 3 x 10(-6) mol/L H(2)O(2) could be detected with a linear range from 5 x 10(-6) to 1 x 10(-4) mol/L via our method. More importantly, a sensitive and selective method for glucose detection was developed using glucose oxidase (GOx) and the as-prepared Fe(3)O(4) MNPs. The detection platforms for H(2)O(2) and glucose developed in the present work not only further confirmed that the Fe(3)O(4) MNPs possess intrinsic peroxidase-like activity but also showed great potential applications in varieties of simple, robust, and easy-to-make analytical approaches in the future.


This report describes a hashing scheme for a dictionary of short bit strings. The scheme, which we call near-perfect hashing, was designed as part of the construction of Mercury BLAST, an FPGA-based accelerator for the BLAST family of biosequence comparison algorithms. Near-perfect hashing is a heuristic variant of the well-known displacement hashing approach to building perfect hash functions. It uses a family of hash functions composed from linear transformations on bit vectors and lookups in small precomputed tables, both of which are especially appropriate for implementation in ardware logic. We show empirically that for inputs derived from genomic DNA sequences, our scheme obtains a good tradeoff between the size of the hash table and the time required to ompute it from a set of input strings, while generating few or no collisions between keys in the table. One of the building blocks of our scheme is the H_3 family of hash functions, which are linear transformations on bit vectors. We show that the uniformity of hashing performed with randomly chosen linear transformations depends critically on their rank, and that randomly chosen transformations have a high probability of having the Type of Report: Other Department of Computer Science & Engineering Washington University in St. Louis Campus Box 1045 St. Louis, MO 63130 ph: (314) 935-6160 Mercury BLAST Dictionaries: Analysis and Performance Measurement Jeremy Buhler firstname.lastname@example.com


We tested the effects of contrast reversal on perceptual learning in a 10AFC texture identification task. Four groups of subjects performed the task on two consecutive days. One group saw the same textures on both days, whereas three other groups saw novel, rotated (180 deg), or contrast-reversed textures on the second day. Response accuracy improved during the first day in all groups. Accuracy decreased significantly at the start of Day 2 in the groups who saw novel, rotated or contrast-reversed textures, but not in the group who saw the same textures. Moreover, the drop in performance was the same in the groups who saw novel, rotated, and contrast-reversed textures. Control experiments showed that making subjects aware of the stimulus transformations at the start of either the first or second day did not alter the results. Hence, the effects of contrast-reversal and 180 deg rotation on the generalization of learning were the same as the effect of using novel stimuli, and knowledge of the stimulus transformation did not reduce their effects. We consider the implications of this pattern of results for the neural mechanisms recruited during the identification and learning of two-dimensional visual patterns.


Background It is unknown whether prodromal services improve outcomes in those who go on to develop psychosis, and whether these patients are demographically different from the overall first-episode population. Aims To compare sociodemographic features, duration of untreated psychosis, hospital admission and frequency of compulsory treatment in the first year after the onset of psychosis in patients who present to prodromal services with patients who did not present to services until the first episode of psychosis. Method We compared two groups of patients with first-episode psychosis: one who made transition after presenting in the prodromal phase and the other who had presented with a first episode. Results The patients who had presented before the first episode were more likely to be employed and less likely to belong to an ethnic minority group. They had a shorter duration of untreated psychosis, and were less likely to have been admitted to hospital and to have required compulsory treatment. Conclusions Patients who develop psychosis after being engaged in the prodromal phase have a better short-term clinical outcome than patients who do not present until the first episode. Patients who present during first episodes may be more likely to have sociodemographic features associated with relatively poor outcomes.


Introduction Irish Travellers, a nomadic minority group in Ireland, experience multi-faceted social deprivation. The All Ireland Traveller Health Study (AITHS) 2007–2011 of an estimated 10 000 families in both Irish jurisdictions shows little improvement in most measured indicators since the last systematic assessment in 1987. The Human Development Index (HDI), measures long term basic dimensions including life expectancy, access to knowledge and an adequate standard of living. In 2010, using the improved HDI calculation, Republic of Ireland (ROI) was placed fifth (HDI=0.895) in the world league (2005–2009: 0.894). The aim of this analysis is to calculate the HDI of Irish Travellers for 2008. Methods The AITHS census, a comprehensive 45 min census interview employing a novel audio-visual computer-assisted instrument, was conducted with Traveller families by 180 trained peer researcher teams over a 6 week period commencing on 14th October 2008. A retrospective mortality study over past 1 year was also conducted. Data from both were used to construct the HDI for Irish Travellers. Results The family response rate was 79%. Life expectancy at birth was estimated at 61.7 years for men, 70.1 for women. Mean years of schooling was 8.1 (SD 4) and 94% of Irish Travellers were below the poverty line. Calculated HDI for Irish Travellers in 2008 is 0.713, 0.181 below ROI's HDI. Conclusion There is a 20.2% difference in HDI for Travellers compared to the general population. This is wider than seen for other indigenous minority populations worldwide and has important cross-sectoral policy implications. (250 words).