The Redband Darter, Etheostoma luteovinctum, is a benthic headwater fish species found in the Caney Fork and Stones rivers (Cumberland River) and the Duck and Elk rivers (Tennessee River) of central Tennessee. Phylogenetic analyses of 2601 amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLPs) were used to assess the relationships among populations and identified two genetically distinct lineages of Redband Darter. One lineage is comprised of populations in the Duck R., Elk R., Middle Fork Stones R., West Fork Stones R., and Hickory Creek of the Caney Fork River, while the other lineage is confined to the remainder of the known localities in the Cumberland R. drainage. As clades were not restricted to drainage or system boundaries, patterns suggest system and drainage transfers. Additionally, morphological variation was examined among populations using standard meristic data and nuptial male color and pigmentation characteristics. Although some morphological traits varied between the two clades, members were not clearly diagnosable using morphology. Taxonomic recognition is not proposed for the two identified clades; however, each clade should be recognized as an evolutionarily significant unit and regarded as such in future conservation efforts. Furthermore, this study demonstrates the utility of AFLPs to assess genetic variation and phylogenetic relationships for species-level taxonomic or phylogeographic studies.


: Gastric dilatation-volvulus is a dramatic and life-threatening disease of large-breed dogs. The cause is unknown, but ingestion of dry cereal-based food is frequently incriminated as a predisposing factor. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of commercial diets on gastric motility and emptying in the dog. Four large-breed dogs were fed 3 different diets (diet A = canned meat-based; B = cereal-based with 77% added water; and C = dry cereal-based) in a randomized block design. Each experiment was done in triplicate. Motility was assessed, using 5 AgAgCl electrodes and 2 strain gauges sutured along the serosa of the stomach and proximal duodenum. Dogs were fed at the same time each day and the time to change from the fed to the fasted pattern of gastrointestinal motility (changeover) was measured. Gastric emptying was assessed by recording gastric radioactivity. After feeding a meal mixed with 99mTc-labeled resin, the log of activity was plotted against time, and the half-time of gastric emptying (t1/2 GE) was calculated. Mean (+/- SEM) times from feeding to changeover for the 3 diets were: diet A, 9.7 +/- 0.9; B, 10.5 +/- 0.4; and C, 11.0 +/- 0.8 hours. Diet had minimal influence on the half time of gastric emptying (diet A, 2.2 +/- 0.3; B, 2.6 +/- 0.4; and C, 2.9 +/- 0.3 hours; P greater than 0.05). The data indicate that gastric motility and emptying in healthy large-breed dogs were not affected by dietary composition. Because most large dogs are fed cereal-based food for reasons of cost and ease of use, these diets may have been wrongly incriminated as a predisposing factor in gastric dilatation-volvulus.


Kristensson, P., 2001. The Effects of Information Technology on Creativity. Dept of Technical Psychology, Luleå University of Technology, Sweden. All innovation begins with creative ideas. Thus, the quality of new products and services is dependent on the creative performance of individuals working alone or in groups. Deriving from research, it is assumed that creativity and information technology (IT) play important roles in service development. Given the increased importance of IT used as a means of communication in organizations, the present thesis aims to examine the effects information technology will have on creative performance. More specifically, the focus of the study was how the creative performance of small groups and individuals, operationalized in terms of process and product, was affected when provided IT tools for communicating ideas. The consensual assessment technique was employed along with independent judges to obtain objective measures. Additionally, participants subjective perceptions were also collected. Two experimental studies were conducted, both with IT as an independent variable. In Study I, the importance of internal beliefs, such as the perceived usefulness of IT, was also considered. Only with small effects detected. As for the IT variable, the possibility of interaction appeared as important, especially regarding the creative process. In study II, the effects of group versus individual creativity were also investigated. The results indicated that IT can decrease relevant creative abilities for both individuals and groups considering its quantitative aspects, with small groups having a better process, and to some extent, also product. Concerning the IT variable, the face-to-face group produced significantly more incubations and overall, also had a better flow in the creative process. Finally, of interest for validity, participants' self-reported perceptions of product and process showed agreement with objective measures. In conclusion, the results suggests that IT affects the creative process somewhat negatively, leaving the creative product more or less unaffected.


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Clearly, the neurotoxic potential of NDL-PCBs has been associated with neurobehavioral effects, including changes in motor activity, learning, memory and attention, which have been associated with neurotransmitter systems. So far, much research has been focused on presynaptic mechanisms, such as neurotransmitter levels and calcium homestasis. However, there is a lack of knowledge on mechanistic information regarding postsynaptic neurotransmitter receptors. Endocrine toxicity of NDL-PCBs involves among others androgenic and estrogenic interactions, which have been related to sex-dependent behavior and morphological changes in gonads, adrenal glands and brain. However, there is a signifcant lack of information on how individual congeners interact with steroidogenic enzymes and endocrine receptors and their mechanism of action. Therefore, the main purpose of this thesis is to gain further insight in the neurotoxic and endocrine disruptive potential of these NDL-PCBs. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on the potential neurotoxicity of NDL-PCBs and their effects on the postsynaptic human GABAA receptor. In 2005 the EFSA has identified six common NDL-PCBs which alone represent approximately 50% of all NDL-PCBs present in food. However, due to the limited number of in vivo and in vitro studies performed with NDL-PCBs, risk characterization and assessment is hampered. Further, direct and acute effects of NDL-PCBs on specific neurotransmitter receptors had not been described uptil the beginning of this thesis. Therefore, in chapter 2 the effects of six common NDL-congeners on the GABAA receptor were investigated. Further, because human exposure is not restricted to single congeners, the effects of binary mixtures of NDL-PCBs on the GABAA receptor were also studied. The limited number of congeners studied in chapter 2 impaired the identification of a SAR of NDL-PCBs on the GABAA receptor. Therefore, the set of NDL-PCBs used in chapter 3 was enlarged, including an extra DL-congener as well. The choice of the used congeners was based on their chemical and physical properties, environmental abundance and toxicological activities. Further, the binary mixtures used in this chapter aimed at assessing the effects not only on potentiation, but also on activation of the receptor. Experimental in vivo results have described sex dependent endocrine disruptive potential of NDL-PCBs. Further, the effects were apparently dependent on the time of exposure. However, many of these studies were performed with (reconstituted) mixtures and the purity of the used NDL-congeners was not always assured. Taken together, the endocrine disruptive effects seen could partially be attributed to the presence of DL-PCBs, known to interfere with the steroidogenic pathway and showing endocrine and reproductive disruptive potential. The brain, adrenals and gonads constitute an important axis in maintaining sex steroid homeostasis and regulating steroidogenesis during perinatal development and adult life. In chapter 4 the effects of perinatal exposure to two commonly found NDL-PCBs on aromatase activity on gonadal and adrenal microsomes at various life-stages were investigated. Moreover, gene expression of aromatase and sex steroid receptor expression in adult rat brain were also assessed. Traditional risk assessment of potential endocrine-disruptive pollutants, including PCBs, focus mainly on the effects of parent compounds. Still, biotransformation results in systemic exposure to PCBs and their bioactive metabolites. In chapter 5, a more mechanistic approach of the effects of twenty NDLPCBs was taken by studying aromatase activity in human placental microsomes and in the H295R cell line. In addition, the interaction of twenty NDL-PCBs with the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) was studied in a recently developed yeast-based glucocorticoid receptor assay. Because high levels of OH-PCBs and MeSO2-PCBs can also be found in human samples, these were studied in these assays as well. Taken together, the data described in this thesis show the potential neuroendocrine effects of NDL-PCBs and their metabolites. Further, perinatal PCB exposure appears to cause persistent neuroendocrine developmental effects that can be detected in adults. A summary and general discussion of the results described in this thesis are given in chapter 6.


This essay explores Marc Blitzstein's 1937 labor opera, The Cradle Will Rock, as an assault on legal legitimacy. Since its famous first production—a pared-down performance in which actors delivered their parts from the house, improvised when the WPA canceled the scheduled opening of the controversial project—critics have emphasized Cradle's indebtedness to the German playwright Bertolt Brecht, to whom Blitzstein dedicated the work. Consistent with Brecht's Verfremdungseffekt, Blitzstein distances the audience from Cradle's characters, substituting rational understanding for unreflective empathy. Like Brecht, he employs this theatrical device to expose the cultural and economic underpinnings of familiar social practices, including capitalism. Imported to the US context, the Brechtian reimagining of theatrical conventions resonated with a corresponding attack on formal legal justice. At the height of the New Deal's crisis of legal legitimacy, Cradle depicts a judicial system baldly beholden to wealth and property. The anti-union steel magnate at the show's center bribes and manipulates journalists, professionals, and public officials to promote his concept of "liberty," namely, freedom from organized labor. By amplifying the effects of economic interests on legal outcomes while undermining empathy with the characters who facilitate and legitimate repression, Cradle invites the audience to consider its own complicity in law's injustice.


Anti-phishing I-voting system using Visual Cryptography (VC) aims at providing a facility to cast vote for critical and confidential internal corporate decisions. The user or the employee is allowed to cast his or her vote from any remote place. The election is held in full confidentiality where the user is allowed to vote only if he logs into the system by entering the correct password. The password is generated by merging two shares using VC scheme. Before the election administrator sends share 1 to the voter's e-mail id and share 2 will be available in the voting system for his login during election. Voter then combines share 1 and share 2 using VC to get the secret password. No information can be revealed by observing any one share. Phishing is an attempt by an individual or a group to get personal confidential information from unsuspecting victims. Phishing is typically carried out by email spoofing or instant messaging and it often directs users to enter personal information at a fake website.


are often distinguished by the unevenness of the individual presentations. This volume, however, can be commended for the high standard of most of the contributions. The contributors are wellknown authorities. Most articles present a broad review of their field, and in some cases there is a review of recent experimental work carried out in the author's own laboratory. The volume is divided into five sections on the nature of cancer, oncofetal proteins, molecular endocrinology, the carcinogenesis of chemotherapy and tumour immunology. Although the various sections are by no means comprehensive, an up-to-date outline of some of the main topics within these fields which impinge on the clinical situation is presented. This reviewer found the first section of the volume on the nature of cancer particularly worthwhile. The chapters by Bendich and co-workers on cell transformation, by L Weiss on the cell periphery, and by S Spiegelman and his colleagues on molecular biology of human cancer present up-to-date views of the cancer problem as seen by different groups of basic research workers. Some of the viewpoints are, of course, highly personalised and to some extent controversial. One can quibble too; it is, for instance, a pity that carcinoembryonic antigen and alfa-fetoprotein should be described as the first oncofetal antigens whereas recognition should surely go to Assheim and Zondek for their discovery of human chorionic gonadotrophin in 1928 and their almost immediate recognition of its association with trophoblastic tumours. Overall, this is a useful series of reviews for the clinician or the pathologist with an interest in oncology.


Although Myanmar has committed itself to achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC), with public spending on health of less than 1% of GDP, poor households face serious problems accessing healthcare services in Myanmar. Partly to address these concerns, in 2012 the Ministry of Health together with GAVI introduced the Hospital Equity Fund (HEF) project. The program was introduced in 20 townships/districts in 2012, gradually expanding to cover 180 townships by end of 2015. The goal of HEF was to increase the inpatient care access of the poor via targeted financial support for specific inpatient care needs. The effectiveness of the targeting strategy under the HEF project in reaching the poor was assessed. Data were collected in 2014 for 2 townships where HEF had been launched in 2012, using a household survey (204 households) and focus group discussions and in depth interviews among local government officials, health staff at the village level, NGO representatives and managers of HEF. Information on socioeconomic status, healthcare use, possession and knowledge of HEF memberships, HEF benefits received and administrative processes governing HEF was collected in each township. In a population segment that was mostly poor, 77% of the surveyed households had not heard of HEF. Among those that had, only one-half knew about the benefits available under HEF. Remarkably, only 1.7 % actually possessed an HEF card; and only 25% of hospitalized cases received HEF benefits. Bottlenecks in HEF fund transfers across government departments further restricted access to poor patients. Little staff effort went into disseminating information about HEF in local communities, as no budgetary allocations were available for this. Although HEF increased hospital use and lowered the financial burden for some households, poor targeting meant that needs of the poor were not well served in the two townships.


RECONSIDER, a computer program for diagnostic prompting developed at the University of California, San Francisco, has been implemented at the Georgetown University Medical Center as part of the Integrated Academic Information Management System Model Development grant project supported by the National Library of Medicine. The system is available for student use in the Biomedical Information Resources Center of the Dahlgren Memorial Library. Instruction on use of the computer system is provided by the library and instruction on medical use of the knowledge base is directed by the faculty. The implementation, capabilities, enhancements such as the addition of Current Medical Informa- tion and Terminology (5th ed.), and evaluation of the system are reported.


Substernal gastric bypass of the excluded thoracic esophagus for palliation of esophageal carcinoma was proposed as a method of providing maximum patient comfort with minimum morbidity. Our results with this operation in 37 patients are reviewed and indicate that the procedure carries unacceptable complication and mortality rates. Among our patients, there have been nine (24%) hospital deaths, seven (19%) anastomotic leaks, and six (17%) disruptions of the divided distal thoracic esophagus. Major postoperative complications have occurred in 59% of these patients. Only 15 (54%) of the 28 survivors were discharged swallowing within 3 weeks of operation, and 10 (36%) required hospitalization for 1 month or longer after operation. The average survival time in those leaving the hospital alive has been only 5.9 months. Only seven patients (25% of the survivors) have achieved good palliation with the bypass procedure. It is concluded that substernal gastric bypass of the excluded thoracic esophagus is too much of an operation for patients with unresectable tumors who have a life expectancy of only several months.


A commercial georadar was tested over in a Norwegian catchment in order to determine the areal mean snow water equivalent ( SWE ) and its spatial distribution. The methodology used and the results obtained are described. The radar was run along a number of selected snow courses, and the results were compared with manual measurements of snow depth and density. It was found that georadar is able to give accurate estimates of mean SWE with much less time spent in the field compared to conventional measurements. Georadar also gave a good description of the areal distribution of SWE .


The colostrum samples were collected during the period November-December at the first milking after calving (Within 4 hours post-partum) and then every 12 hours (morning and evening) for 6 days respectively from 3 Friesian cows and 3 water buffalo cows. The colostrum samples of 8 "Gentile di Puglia" ewes in the first three milkings after calving were also collected. During the experimental period the newborn were separated from their mothers. The Mn, Cu, Fe, Zn content in colostrum was estimated by atomic absorption spectroscopy. Results are given in Figure 1 for cows and buffaloes, and in Table 1 for ewes. The trace element content during the first 6 days in both groups was higher in the moring colostrum. The mean concentrations of Mn, Cu, Fe, Zn, in colostrum of the water buffaloes were higher than in that of the cows.


In this paper, we present a reconfigurable processor infrastructure to accelerate Java applications, called Jaguar. The Jaguar infrastructure consists of a compiler framework and a runtime environment support. The compiler framework selects a group of Java methods to be translated into hardware for delivering the best performance under limited resources, and translates the selected Java methods into Verilog synthesizable code modules. The runtime environment support includes the Java virtual machine (JVM) running on a host processor to provide Java execution environment to the generated Java accelerator through communication interface units while preserving Java semantics. Our compiler infrastructure is a tightly integrated and solid compiler-aided solution for Java reconfigurable computing. There is no limitation in generating synthesizable Verilog modules from any Java application while preserving Java semantics. In terms of performance, our infrastructure achieves the speedup by 5.4 times on average and by up to 9.4 times in measured benchmarks with respect to JVM-only execution. Furthermore, two optimization schemes such as an instruction folding and a live buffer removal can reduce 24% on average and up to 39% of the resource consumption.


We empirically analyze five online communities: Friendster, Livejournal, Facebook, Orkut, and Myspace, to study how social networks decline. We define social resilience as the ability of a community to withstand changes. We do not argue about the cause of such changes, but concentrate on their impact. Changes may cause users to leave, which may trigger further leaves of others who lost connection to their friends. This may lead to cascades of users leaving. A social network is said to be resilient if the size of such cascades can be limited. To quantify resilience, we use the k-core analysis, to identify subsets of the network in which all users have at least k friends. These connections generate benefits (b) for each user, which have to outweigh the costs (c) of being a member of the network. If this difference is not positive, users leave. After all cascades, the remaining network is the k-core of the original network determined by the cost-to-benefit (c/b) ratio. By analysing the cumulative distribution of k-cores we are able to calculate the number of users remaining in each community. This allows us to infer the impact of the c/b ratio on the resilience of these online communities. We find that the different online communities have different k-core distributions. Consequently, similar changes in the c/b ratio have a different impact on the amount of active users. Further, our resilience analysis shows that the topology of a social network alone cannot explain its success of failure. As a case study, we focus on the evolution of Friendster. We identify time periods when new users entering the network observed an insufficient c/b ratio. This measure can be seen as a precursor of the later collapse of the community. Our analysis can be applied to estimate the impact of changes in the user interface, which may temporarily increase the c/b ratio, thus posing a threat for the community to shrink, or even to collapse.


OBJECT
In this prospective study, the authors offered protocol-selected patients a combination of parenteral steroids, decompression surgery, and localized cooling to preserve viable spinal cord tissue and enhance functional recovery.

METHODS
After acquiring informed consent, the authors offered this regimen with localized deep cord cooling (dural temperature 6°C) to 20 patients with a neurologically complete spinal cord injury to begin within 8 hours of injury. After decompression, the cord was locally cooled through the intact dura using a suspended extradural saddle at the site of injury for up to 4 hours, during which time spinal fusion was performed. Sensation and motor function were evaluated directly after the injury and again over a year later. The patients were evaluated using the 2011 amendment to the American Spinal Injury Association (ASIA) Impairment Scale.

RESULTS
Eighty percent of the 20 patients (12 with cervical and 4 thoracic injuries) with an initial neurologically complete cord injury had some recovery of sensory or motor function. All patients initially had ASIA Grade A impairment. Of 14 patients with quadriplegia, 5 remained ASIA Grade A, 5 improved to ASIA Grade B, 3 to ASIA Grade C, and 1 to ASIA Grade D. The remaining 6 patients had suffered a thoracic spinal cord injury, and of these 2 remained ASIA Grade A, 1 recovered to ASIA Grade B, 2 to ASIA Grade C, and 1 ASIA Grade D. All considered, of 20 patients, 35% remained ASIA Grade A, 30% improved to ASIA Grade B, and 25% to ASIA Grade C. Impairment in 2 (10%) of 20 patients improved to ASIA Grade D. The mean improvement in neurological level of injury in all patients was 1.05, the mean improvement in motor level was 1.7, and the mean improvement in sensory level was 2.8. Two patients recovered the ability to walk, 2 could extend their legs, 5 could sense bladder fullness, and 3 had partial ability to void voluntarily. Four males recovered subnormal ability to have voluntary erection sufficient for limited sexual activity.

CONCLUSIONS
The authors present here results of 20 patients with neurologically complete spinal cord injury treated with a combination of surgical decompression, glucocorticoid administration, and regional hypothermia. These patients experienced a better recovery than might have been expected had traditional forms of treatment been used. The benefit of steroid treatment for cord injury has been debated in the last decade, but the authors feel that research into the effects of cord cooling should be expanded. Given that the optimal neuroprotective temperature after acute trauma has not yet been defined, and may well be below that which is considered safely approachable through systemic cooling, methods that allow for the early attainment of such a temperature locally should be further explored. The results are encouraging enough to suggest the undertaking of controlled clinical trials of treatment using localized spinal cord cooling, where such treatment can be instituted within hours following injury.


This article studies the persistence of bond exchange-traded fund (ETF) premiums and discounts. Following a day of high or low premiums or discounts over net asset value (NAV), ETFs tend to maintain a premium or discount for up to 30 days. Premiums and discounts also predict distinct patterns of returns after daily closing. Overnight returns are negative following a high premium, while ETFs with large discounts are followed by positive overnight returns. The large discount ETFs have substantially higher returns than high premium ETFs over the subsequent thirty days. We find that traditional liquidity measures, along with prior deviations from NAV, are significant in explaining a fund's premiums/discounts. Finally, we examine a long–short portfolio strategy to exploit the observed deviations from NAV and find it generates an alpha of 0.96% per month or about 11.5% per year.


To study the assembly of gap junctions, connexin--green-fluorescent-protein (Cx--GFP) chimeras were expressed in COS-7 and HeLa cells. Cx26-- and Cx32--GFP were targeted to gap junctions where they formed functional channels that transferred Lucifer Yellow. A series of Cx32--GFP chimeras, truncated from the C-terminal cytoplasmic tail, were studied to identify amino acid sequences governing targeting from intracellular assembly sites to the gap junction. Extensive truncation of Cx32 resulted in failure to integrate into membranes. Truncation of Cx32 to residue 207, corresponding to removal of most of the 78 amino acids on the cytoplasmic C-terminal tail, led to arrest in the endoplasmic reticulum and incomplete oligomerization. However, truncation to amino acid 219 did not impair Cx oligomerization and connexon hemichannels were targeted to the plasma membrane. It was concluded that a crucial gap-junction targeting sequence resides between amino acid residues 207 and 219 on the cytoplasmic C-terminal tail of Cx32. Studies of a Cx32E208K mutation identified this as one of the key amino acids dictating targeting to the gap junction, although oligomerization of this site-specific mutation into hexameric hemichannels was relatively unimpaired. The studies show that expression of these Cx--GFP constructs in mammalian cells allowed an analysis of amino acid residues involved in gap-junction assembly.


Ikh Nart's Rock is a resource area in the Gobi desert zone. The summer is characterized by very hot weather with very rare rain. However shaded and sheltered faces of big rocks are suitable for abundant moss growth, although the species diversity is low, and only few species are present in many places here: Tortula atrovirens, Syntrichia pagorum, Fabronia ciliaris, and Didymodon rigidulus. Among 114 specimens collected in 2007 from the cliff formation near Argali and Yangir resource center in Ikh Nart's natural resource land, 26 species of 13 genera and 7 families were revealed.


While existing research has explored the relationship between Internet use and civic engagement, this study is among the first to examine the effects of general Internet use, social network site use, and Internet efficacy on online and offline civic participation using the 2010 Pew Internet and American Life Project 'Social Side of the Internet' survey (N = 2,303). Results show that general Internet use and social network site use enhance web and wireless participation. However, neither increases offline participation. Individual Internet efficacy enhances both online and offline participation, but group Internet efficacy decreases offline participation. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings of this study for engagement are discussed.


The outcome of several studies into future X-ray astronomy satellite missions has favoured the approach of using grazing incidence optics in conjunction with Charged Coupled Devices (CCD's) as focal plane detectors. This approach allows astrophysical investigation of unprecedented sensitivity by maximising source detectability and by resolving the source spectra. This thesis covers work performed in the development and evaluation of EEV CCD's for use as focal plane X-ray detectors. Due to the nature of the space environment, the interactions of radiation with CCD's also form a major part of this thesis. The subject of X-ray astronomy is introduced and the considerations affecting the operation of CCD's in space are discussed. The construction and operation of the CCD is thoroughly reviewed. The equipment and techniques used to evaluate the performance CCD's to X-rays are presented. A model is developed to simulate the interaction of X-rays with CCD's and this is followed by detailed measurements of X-ray performance. Further improvements to the design of CCDs to optimise their use as X-ray detectors are also discussed. These improvements include increased high and low energy quantum efficiency, larger area, low noise, reduced dark current and increased tolerance to radiation damage. Sources of background signal are investigated which lead to background rejection schemes for different CCD designs. Modelling is also performed to simulate an application of CCD's in space. Measurements of the radiation damage suffered by the CCD's are given and the damage mechanisms which will ultimately lead to device failure in space are discussed. The radiation damage covers irradiation using Co60 and heavy ions, but focuses on the effects of protons of doses below 5 kraals. The impact of such a fluence on the scientific performance of an X-ray satellite is evaluated.


The use of carbamates has been implicated in several suicides and in accidental poisoning. Rapid identification of these carbamates in clinical samples can direct the course of medical intervention and help save lives. In this study, we describe a new, operationally simple, and rapid method that employs a gas chromatograph (GC) or gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer (GC-MS) coupled to a NeedlEx® to analyze such toxic carbamates. NeedlEx®, a needle packed with media for the selective adsorption of volatile organic compunds, is idealy suited for use in such methods.


Hydrologic flow and connectivity act as important determinants of ecological pattern and process in heterogeneous landscapes. Here we examine how the routing of water through the drainage network of an upper Sonoran Desert basin influences landscape patterns of soil respiration (SR) at both seasonal and event-based timescales. At seasonal timescales, SR varied up to 13-fold with downstream position in the drainage network, and annual estimates of CO2 efflux ranged from 185 g C x m(-2) x yr(-1) to 1190 g C x m(-2) x yr(-1) for sites arrayed along the same flow path. Spatial patterns of SR were unrelated to the carbon and water content of surface soils, but rather tracked changes in plant size and productivity, which in turn reflect downstream increases in groundwater availability. The relative importance of precipitation and temperature as drivers of SR also changed with landscape position, with the latter becoming more important in downstream locations. At the scale of individual precipitation events, SR increased up to 30-fold upon rewetting but typically returned to background levels within 24 h, even when soil moisture remained elevated. Unlike patterns observed at seasonal scales, event-based losses of CO2 varied across the landscape as a function of the organic-matter content in surface soils. Results from labile carbon amendments confirm that CO2 losses following precipitation pulses are initially constrained by substrate availability, not soil drying. By mediating spatial patterns of vegetation structure and soil resource availability, drainage networks represent an important physical template upon which belowground processes are organized in desert basins.


SummaryTheuseof peritoneal dialysis (PD) has become wide spread since the introduction of continuous ambulatory PD more than 25 years ago. Over this time, many advances have been made and PD is an alternative to hemodialysis (HD), with excellent comparable survival, lower cost, and improved quality of life. The percentage of prevalent PD patients in the United States is approximately 7%, which is significantly lower compared with the 15% PD prevalence from the mid-1980s. Despite comparable survival of HD and PD and improved PD technique survival over the last few years, the percentage of patients performing PD in the United States has declined. The increased numbers of in-center HD units, physician comfort with the modality, perceived superiority of HD, and reimbursement incentives have all contributed to the underutilization of PD. In addition to a higher transplantation rate among patients treated with PD in the United States, an important reason for the low PD prevalence is the transfer to HD. There are various reasons for the transfer ( e.g. , episodes of peritonitis, membrane failure, patient fatigue, etc.). This review discusses the various factors that contribute to PD underutilization and the rationale and strategies to implement "PD first" and how to maintain it. The PD first concept implies that when feasible, PD should be offered as the first dialysis modality. This concept of PD first and HD second must not be seen as a competition between therapies, but rather that they are complementary, keeping in mind the long-term goals for the patient.


SUMMARY. Clinical outbreaks of severe acute infectious bursal disease (IBD) were recorded since the mid- and late 1990s in several countries in the southeastern part of Europe. Epidemiologic data showed that both infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV)-vaccinated and IBDV-nonvaccinated chickens were affected with acute IBD and mortality up to 50% independent of the IBDV vaccination status of the appropriate parent flocks. For investigation of the causative agent of acute IBD, the variable region of VP2 was amplified, cloned, and sequenced. Nucleotide sequence analysis of polymerase chain reaction fragments showed several silent nucleotide exchanges in comparison with the sequence of the very virulent (vv) IBDV strain UK661. Also, restriction enzyme cleavage sites proposed specific for vvIBDV were present in all investigated strains. On the basis of clinical signs in affected flocks, recorded epidemiologic data, and sequence analysis, it is very likely the IBD-causing strains were of the vv phenotype.


The amount and timing of precipitation on the Canadian Prairie is critical to grain production. Information on the precipitation trend is therefore vital to this region. Regression analysis was used to establish linear trends of precipitation amounts and number of precipitation events at 37 stations with 75 years of record (prior to and including 1995) across the Canadian Prairie. There has been a significant increase in the number of precipitation events mainly due to an increase in the number of low-intensity events. As such precipitation events are not getting more intense. From 1921 to 1995 on the Canadian Prairie, the number of precipitation events (excluding events that are 0.5 mm or less) has increased by 16 events, and precipitation and rainfall amounts have increased by 0.62 mm and 0.60 mm per annum, respectively. During the period from 1921 to 1960 the trends in precipitation, rainfall and snowfall were not statistically different from zero. However, from 1961 to 1995, snowfall has declined by 0.95 mm per year. The trends in the most recent period (1961 to 1995) were also significantly different from those in the 1921 to 1960 period for snowfall. The difference in trends between the two periods for snowfall, combined with the inverse relationship in the rainfall-snowfall trends suggest that these trends may be related to climate change.


Abstract. A comprehensive empirical model of waves is developed in the objective to simulate wave-particle interactions involved in the loss and acceleration of radiation belt electrons. Three years of measured magnetic wave field components from the Plasma Wave Instrument on board the DE-1 satellite are used to model the amplitude spectral density of the magnetic wave field of each type of emission observed in the equatorial regions of the plasmasphere: VLF transmitter emissions, chorus emissions, plasmaspheric hiss emissions and equatorial emissions below ~ 200 Hz. Each model is a function of the wave frequency f , the MLT, L and Mlat parameters, and the Kp values. The performances of the plasmaspheric hiss and chorus models are tested on amplitude spectra recorded on board the OGO-5 and GEOS-1 satellites. Key words. Magnetospheric physics (plasmasphere; plasma waves and instabilities; instruments and techniques)


Security issues are among the first to be raised whenever access to patient information is discussed, because of confidentiality concerns. At the same time, patients' information needs to be readily available to all authorized health-care providers at all times in order to ensure proper treatment. There is a challenge when integrating, implementing, maintaining and securing an electronic health record (EHR). In practice, patients' health records are distributed around different hospitals and the retrieval of this scattered information when a patient visits a doctor in any particular hospital and building of a secure EHR sharing pose serious and difficult problems. In this paper, we propose a new security policy framework for an EHR system that uses a dynamic system and cryptographic access control (CAC) on cloud computing to secure and manage users' activities on the cloud. Using real-life publicly available medical records on the UCI machine repository and data generated from OpenMRS, extensive experiments were conducted. Our experimental results suggest that the dynamic system and cloud computing have the capability to manage users of EHR systems. This excellent performance suggests wider application in both the healthcare and academic communities.


The Lake Bafa is an alluvial bar lake located in the Aegean Region in the Big Meander river basin in Aydin and Mugla provinces. However, the lake is currently threatened by severe pollution, being under the risk of serious degradation because of (i) uncontrolled urbanization; (ii) point and non-point source pollution; (iii) algae bloom; (iv) sediment transportation and pollution via influent creeks to the lake; and (v) severe degradation of the natural wetlands within its drainage basin. In this study, the water samples taken from 8 different stations which were inside and the shores of the Lake Bafa in February 2009, 2010 and August 2009, 2010. The stations that were spotted in the lake were analyzed for the physical and chemical changes taking place in water quality. Temperature, pH, EC, CO3, HCO3, Cl, NO2, NO3, DO, o-PO4, Na, K, Ca and Mg parameters were measured. In the analyses, August and February months were chosen and their pollution loads were compared. Because of the fact that tourism activities generally increase in Lake Bafa, especially in August, domestic water discharges go up. Therefore, these rises cause pollution load in lake in August. On the other hand, Lake Bafa just serves for fishing boats in February, so pollution rate in February is not as much as in August within Lake. In other words, water pollution in August is higher than pollution in February.


Aim. The aim of this study was to test an oral contrast solution with maghemite for the magnetic resonance imaging of small bowel diseases. Patients and methods. The study sample included 3 cohorts: 17 healthy volunteers (group A), 22 patients with small bowel disease (group C). Both groups underwent MR enterography and 24 patients with small bowel disease (group B) underwent magnetic resonance cholecystopancreaticography. Various concentrations in 1000 ml vs 500 ml of experimental solution were tested. All cohorts completed questionnaires evaluating the solution characteristics and side-efects during and after drinking. Results. A maghemite concentration of 800 mg /4 g bentonite in 1000 ml solution was sufficient for proper intraluminal lay-out. An experimental solution of 500 ml was sufficient for magnetic resonance cholecystopancreaticography and 1000 ml for MR enterography. There were no statistically significant differences between groups for taste, taste characteristic or appearance of the experimental solution. Side-effects experienced during drinking were: nausea (29.4%) and eructation (29.4%) in group A, in group B (42%) and diarrhoea (27.3%) in group C. Side-effects 2 h after drinking occured in group A (nausea 17.6%) and in group C (diarrhoea 47%). The best tolerance of experimental solution was found in group B with a higher median patient age than groups A and C. The experimental solution was evaluated more favorably in the older subjects (age over 50 years). Conclusion. The experimental oral solution with maghemite was well tolerated in all 3 groups. Our study supports its use in magnetic resonance practice.


Creating software releases is one of the more tedious occupations in the life of a software developer. For this purpose we have tried to automate as many of the repetitive tasks involved as possible from getting the commits to running the software. For this simplification we rely in large parts on free collaborative services available around GitHub: issue tracking, code review (GitHub), continuous integration (Travis-CI), static code analysis (coverity). The dependencies and compilers used in the continuous integration are obtained by mounting CVMFS into a docker container. This enables running any desired compiler version (e.g., gcc 6.2, llvm 3.9) or tool (e.g, clang-format, pylint). To create tags for the software package the powerful GitHub API is used. A script was developed that first collates the release notes from the description of each pull request, commits the release notes file, and finally makes a tag. This moves the burden of writing release notesfrom the package maintainer to the individual developer. The deployment of software releases to CVMFS is handled via GitLab-CI. When a tag is made the software is built and automatically deployed. In this paper we will describe the software infrastructure used for the iLCSoft and iLCDirac projects, which are used by CLICdp and the ILC detector collaborations, and give examples of automation which might be useful for others.


Desert dust, both modern and ancient, is a critical component of the Earth system. Atmospheric dust has important effects on climate by changing the atmospheric radiation budget, while deposited dust influences biogeochemical cycles in the oceans and on land. Dust deposited on snow and ice decreases its albedo, allowing more light to be trapped at the surface, thus increasing the rate of melt and influencing energy budgets and river discharge. In the human realm, dust contributes to the transport of allergens and pathogens and when inhaled can cause or aggravate respiratory diseases. Dust storms also represent a significant hazard to road and air travel. Because it affects so many Earth processes, dust is studied from a variety of perspectives and at multiple scales, with various disciplines examining emissions for different purposes using disparate strategies. Thus, the range of objectives in studying dust, as well as experimental approaches and results, has not yet been systematically integrated. Key research questions surrounding the production and sources of dust could benefit from improved collaboration among different research communities. These questions involve the origins of dust, factors that influence dust production and emission, and methods through which dust can be monitored.


Discovering underlying relationships among financial variables will strongly support various financial researches. In this paper, A novel incremental learning algorithm for Bayesian networks is proposed to build up the relationships among financial variables automatically. Our algorithm can partially update the learned structure according to the new generated financial data, which provide a realtime guarantee on our algorithm. Experiment results show that our algorithm outperforms all the available incremental learning algorithms, even some widely used batch learning algorithms for Bayesian networks both on classic data sets and real financial data sets.


Improved environmental management facilities provide social benefits to economic agents in Ghana. Biogas technology facility is one solution that offers societal gains. However, the maximization of social benefit in some cases depends on the structure of the market. The objective of this study was to examine loss in consumer surplus and gain in producer surplus, and if there was, deadweight loss relating to regulated biogas market structure in Ghana. The simple market models were fundamental tools in the economic surplus method used for the study. The results of the study showed that regulated monopoly although productive reduces societal gains and so inefficient compared with the free market. The regulated monopolist‖ producer gain was 13%, but there was 37% and 41% loss to consumers and investors‖ NPV respectively. There was also a deadweight loss of US$18,140.00. Market forces allow consumers to be future regulators of previously government regulated 2nd and 3rd degree discriminating monopoly. It is possible to avoid Market forces regulation in biogas diffusion when participants are reluctant to hike price.


OpenBSD is a Unix-like computer operating system that is widely regarded for its excellent documentation and its fanatical focus on security. "The OpenBSD Crash Course" Short Cut will help you get an x86 or AMD64/EM64T server, desktop, or network appliance up and running quickly with OpenBSD. You'll learn how to install or upgrade OpenBSD on x86 and AMD64 machines, how to configure it for server or workstation use, and how to properly maintain it until the next release.


In this survey, case study program is evaluated to improve one the Iran khodro company suppliers . And we tried to implement measurement analysis system that is one of the requirements of the automotive companies, leads to powerful increase in product quality and reducing the cost of duplication and external/internal failure and price. In this paper we used a methodology called; MSA along with APQP and designing the test in the form of three inspectors in the final control on one of important characteristics to measure (the AXIAL WIDTH of ring piston), with measurement, instruments capability(variable aspect),and inspector capability (attribute aspect). The MSA action strongly influences the company s general business performance as revealed by the final analysis in the article. In conclusion, the results concerning the first test (GR&R or capability of measuring instrument) was accepted by implementing the required corrective action, And the results for attribute test (inspector capability) and their ability were identified to detect the correct piece, and the inspectors were achieved in organizing arrangements.


Management of severely malnourished children with associated complications relies on hospital-based treatment. Implementation of a standardized protocol at the Dhaka Hospital, ICDDR,B reduced case fatality approximately 50%. We developed and prospectively evaluated a day-care clinic approach that provided antibiotics, micronutrients and feeding during the day with continued care by parents at home at night as an alternative to hospitalization. Severely malnourished children aged 6-23 months denied admission to hospital were enrolled at Radda Clinic, Dhaka and received protocolized management with antibiotics, micronutrients and milk-based diet from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm each day, while mothers were educated on continuation of care at home. They were transitioned to the day-care nutrition rehabilitation (NR) unit of Radda Clinic following resolution of acute illness, received NR diet (Khichuri, halwa and milk-based) daily until children attained 80% weight-for-length. From February 2001 to November 2003, 264 children were enrolled; 52% were boys and 78%, 21% and 1% had marasmus, marasmus-kwashiorkor and kwashiorkor, respectively. Only 13% had severe malnutrition alone while 35% had pneumonia, 35% had diarrhea and 17% had both pneumonia and diarrhea. The mean (SD) duration of acute and NR phases were 8 (4) and 14 (13) days, respectively. Children gained weight [mean (SD) g/kg day] more rapidly during acute 10 (7) than NR phase 6 (5). Successful management was possible in 82% (95% CI 77-86%) children, 12% discontinued treatment and 6% referred to hospitals. Only one child died during NR phase. Severely malnourished children can be successfully managed at existing day-care clinics using a protocolized approach.


The feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) is a retrovirus with global impact and distribution, affecting both domestic and wild cats. This virus can cause severe and progressive immunosuppression culminating in the death of felids. Since the discovery of FIV, only one vaccine has been commercially available. This vaccine has proven efficiency against FIV subtypes A and D, whereas subtype B (FIV-B), found in multiple continents, is not currently preventable by vaccination. We, therefore, developed and evaluated a vaccine prototype against FIV-B using the recombinant viral vector modified vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA) expressing the variable region V1–V3 of the FIV-B envelope protein. We conducted preclinical tests in immunized mice (C57BL/6) using a prime-boost protocol with a 21 day interval and evaluated cellular and humoral responses as well the vaccine viability after lyophilization and storage. The animals immunized with the recombinant MVA/FIV virus developed specific splenocyte proliferation when stimulated with designed peptides. We also detected cellular and humoral immunity activation with IFN-y and antibody production. The data obtained in this study support further development of this immunogen and testing in cats.


Recent shock compression experiments produced clear evidence of a new carbon phase, but a full structural identification has remained elusive. Here we establish by ab initio calculations a body-centered cubic carbon phase in Ia3¯d(O10h) symmetry, which contains twelve atoms in its primitive cell, thus termed BC12, and comprises all-sp3 six-membered rings. This structural configuration places BC12 carbon in the same bonding type as cubic diamond, and its stability is verified by phonon mode analysis. Simulated x-ray diffraction patterns provide an excellent match to the previously unexplained distinct diffraction peak found in shock compression experiments. Electronic band and density of states calculations reveal that BC12 is a semiconductor with a direct band gap of ~2.97eV. Lastly, these results provide a solid foundation for further exploration of this new carbon allotrope.


About the Author. Foreword. Acknowledgments. Introduction. Who Is This Book For? What This Book Is Not How to Use This Book Exercises Conventions Used in This Book An Agile Overview. What Is "Agile?" What Is Java? Why OO? What Is an Object? What Are Classes? Why UML? What Is Inheritance? Why Test-Driven Development? Setting Up. Software You'll Need Does It Work? Compiling Hello World Executing Hello World Still Stuck? Lesson 1: Getting Started. Testing Design A Simple Test JUnit Adding a Test Creating a Student Creating the Student Class Constructors Local Variables Returning a Value from a Method Assertions Instance Variables Summarizing the Test Refactoring this private Naming Conventions Whitespace Exercises Lesson 2: Java Basics. CourseSession Enrolling Students int Initialization Default Constructors Suites The SDK and java.util.ArrayList Adding Objects Incremental Refactoring Objects in Memory Packages and the import Statement The java.lang Package The Default Package and the package Statement The setup Method More Refactoring Class Constants Dates Overload Constructors Deprecation Warnings Refactoring Creating Dates with Calendar Comments Javadoc Comments Exercises Lesson 3: Strings and Packages. Characters and Strings Strings StringBuilder System Properties Looping Through All Students Single-Responsibility Principle Refactoring System.out Using System.out Refactoring Package Structure Access Modifiers Using Ant Exercises Lesson 4: Class Methods and Fields. Class Methods Class Variables Operating on Class Variables with Class Methods Static Import Incrementing Factory Methods Simple Design Static Dangers Using Statics: Various Notes Jeff's Rule of Statics Booleans Tests as Documentation More on Initialization Exceptions Revisiting Primitive-Type Field Initialization Exercises Lesson 5: Interfaces and Polymorphism. Sorting: Preparation Sorting: Collections.sort CourseReportTest Interfaces Why Interfaces Implementing Comparable Sorting on Department and Number The if Statement Grading Students Floating-Point Numbers Testing Grades Refactoring Enums Polymorphism Using Interface References ArrayList and the List Interface Exercises Lesson 6: Inheritance. The switch Statement Case Labels Are Just Labels Maps Inheritance Abstract Classes Extending Methods Refactoring Enhancing the Grade Enum Summer Course Sessions Calling Superclass Constructors Refactoring More on Constructors Inheritance and Polymorphism The Principle of Subcontracting Exercises Lesson 7: Legacy Elements. Looping Constructs Breaking Up a Student's Name The while Loop Comparing Java Loops Refactoring Looping Control Statements The Ternary Operator Legacy Collections Iterators Iterators and the for-each Loop Casting Wrapper Classes Arrays Refactoring Exercises Lesson 8: Exceptions and Logging. Exceptions Dealing With Exceptions Checked Exceptions Exception Hierarchy Creating Your Own Exception Type Checked Exceptions vs. Unchecked Exceptions Messages Catching Multiple Exceptions Rethrowing Exceptions Stack Traces The finally Block Refactoring Logging Logging in Java Testing Logging Logging to Files Testing Philosophy for Logging More on FileHandler Logging Levels Logging Hierarchies Additional Notes on Logging Exercises Lesson 9: Maps and Equality. Logical Operators Short-Circuiting Hash Tables Courses Refactoring Session Equality The Contract for Equality Apples and Oranges Collections and Equality Hash Tables Collisions An Ideal Hash Algorithm A Final Note on hashCode More on Using HashMaps Additional Hash Tables and Set Implementations toString Strings and Equality Exercises Lesson 10: Mathematics. BigDecimal More on Primitive Numerics Integer Math Numeric Casting Expression Evaluation Order NaN Infinity Numeric Overflow Bit Manipulation Java.lang.Math Numeric Wrapper Classes Random Numbers Exercises Lesson 11: IO. Organization Character Streams Writing to a File Java.io.File Byte Streams and Conversion A Student User Interface Testing the Application Data Streams CourseCatalog Advanced Streams Object Streams Random Access Files The Student Directory sis.db.DataFileTest Static Nested Classes and Inner Classes sis.db.DataFile sis.db.KeyFileTest sis.db.KeyFile sis.util.IOUtilTest sis.util.IOUtil sis.util.TestUtil Developing the Solution Exercises Lesson 12: Reflection and Other Advanced Topics. Mock Objects Revisited The Jim Bob ACH Interface The Mock Class The Account Class Implementation Anonymous Inner Classes Adapters Accessing Variables from the Enclosing Class Tradeoffs Reflection Using JUnit Code The Class Class Building the Suite Class Modifiers Dynamic Proxy A Secure Account Class Building the Secure Account Solution The SecureProxy Class Problems With Reflection Exercises Lesson 13: Mulithreading. Multithreading Search Server The Search Class Less Dependent Testing The Server Waiting in the Test Creating and Running Threads Cooperative and Preemptive Multitasking Synchronization Creating Threads with Runnable Synchronized Synchronized Collections BlockingQueue Stopping Threads Wait/Notify Additional Notes on wait and notify Locks and Conditions Thread Priorities Deadlocks ThreadLocal The Timer Class Thread Miscellany Summary: Basic Design Principles for Synchronization Exercises Lesson 14: Generics. Parameterized Types Collection Framework Multiple Type Parameters Creating Parameterized Types Erasure Upper Bounds Wildcards Implications of Using Wildcards Generic Methods Wildcard Capture Super Additional Bounds Raw Types Checked Collections Arrays Additional Limitations Reflection Final Notes Exercises Lesson 15: Assertions and Annotations. Assertions The assert Statement vs. JUnit Assert Methods Annotations Building a Testing Tool TestRunnerTest TestRunner The @TestMethod Annotation Retention Annotation Targets Skipping Test Methods Modifying TestRunner Single-Value Annotations A TestRunner User Interface Class Array Parameters Multiple Parameter Annotations Default Values Additional Return Types and Complex Annotation Types Package Annotations Compatibility Considerations Additional Notes on Annotations Summary Exercises Additional Lesson I: Swing, Part 1. Swing Getting Started Swing Application Design Panels Refactoring More Widgets Refactoring Button Clicks and ActionListeners List Models The Application Layout GridBagLayout Moving Forward Additional Lesson II: Swing, Part 2. Miscellaneous Aesthetics Feel Tables Feedback Responsiveness Remaining Tasks Final Notes Additional Lesson III: Java Miscellany. JARs Regular Expressions Cloning and Covariance JDBC Internationalization Call by Reference versus Call by Value Java Periphery What Else Is There? Appendix A: An Agile Java Glossary. Appendix B: Java Operator Precedence Rules. Appendix C: Getting Started with IDEA. IDEA The Hello Project Running Tests Taking Advantage of IDEA Agile Java References. Index.


TO THE EDITOR: The two contributions by Gray and colleagues1 and Loblay and colleagues2 on the topic of salicylate intolerance illustrate that absence of evidence does not equate to evidence of absence.3 Neither paper quotes the admittedly sparse European peer-reviewed literature on the topic, including an understanding of the basic biochemistry,4,5 a diagnostic test, and clinical prevalence studies of intolerance to dietary salicylate.5-7 A wealth of anecdotal evidence also exists about the benefits of a low salicylate diet on gastrointestinal symptoms in the community, with support groups such as the Food Intolerance Network reporting many "success stories" resulting from dietary interventions (http:// fedup.com.au). It is unfortunate that there is a lack of high-quality clinical and epidemiological research into what appears to be a common problem. However, even in the absence of a greater understanding of the underlying causes, selective and appropriately implemented dietary manipulation may be really helpful.


Neurons have two types of processes: axons and dendrites. Axons have an active disassembly program activated by severing. It has not been tested whether dendrites have an analogous program. We sever Drosophila dendrites in vivo and find that they are cleared within 24 h. Morphologically, this clearance resembles developmental dendrite pruning and, to some extent, axon degeneration. Like axon degeneration, both injury-induced dendrite degeneration and pruning can be delayed by expression of Wld(s) or UBP2. We therefore hypothesized that they use common machinery. Surprisingly, comparison of dendrite pruning and degeneration in the same cell demonstrated that none of the specific machinery used to prune dendrites is required for injury-induced dendrite degeneration. In addition, we show that the rapid program of dendrite degeneration does not require mitochondria. Thus, dendrites do have a rapid program of degeneration, as do axons, but this program does not require the machinery used during developmental pruning.


We study hypotheses testing in the presence of a possibly singular covariance matrix. We propose an alternative way to handle possible non-regularity in a covariance matrix of a Wald test, using the identity matrix as the weighting matrix when calculating the quadratic form. The resulting test statistic is not pivotal, but its asymptotic distribution can be approximated using bootstrap methods. In order to prove the validity of the approximations, we show that the square root of a positive semi-definite matrix is a continuously differentiable transformation with respect to the elements of the matrix. This result is important for the continuous mapping theorem to be applicable. We use two types of approximations. The first uses the parametric bootstrap and draws from the asymptotic distribution of the restriction with an estimated covariance matrix. The second applies the residual bootstrap to obtain the distribution of the test and delivers critical values, which control size and show good empirical power even in small samples. In contrast to regularization approaches, the test statistic considered in this paper does not involve arbitrary truncation parameters for which no practical guidelines are available and does not modify the information in the data.


Events in Singapore have shone a spotlight on the rarely discussed issue of corporate governance in a members' voluntary winding up and the related question of corporate governance in insolvent liquidation. First, a series of related litigation concerning the liquidator's conduct and the right of minority shareholder/creditor led to the question of whether the statutory derivative action is available in a winding up. The Singapore Court of Appeal concluded that it is not. Second, the recently passed Insolvency, Restructuring and Dissolution Act 2018 continued with the old policy of excluding members' voluntary winding up from the requirement that the liquidator must be a licensed insolvency professional. This article discusses the two questions within the broader context of corporate governance in winding up. Through analysing the governance structures in winding up and comparing that with governance structures in going concerns, this article supports the Court of Appeal's decision beyond the specific reasons given in the judgment, and argues that sound governance in members' voluntary winding up is seriously undermined by allowing non-professionals to act as liquidators.


The selection of nest sites and nesting material may have important implications for avian reproductive behaviour and performance. Nest construction may involve costs arising from transporting material that may be reduced considerably if nest materials are located close to the nest site. Eurasian Nuthatch Sitta europaea nests in our nest box study area are mainly composed of pine bark flakes or alternatively of strips of bark of the widespread shrub Cistus laurifolius, with variable amounts of mud being used for plastering the entrance. Several small streams run through the area — an oak Quercus pyrenaica forest with a few scattered pines Pinus sylvestris. Here we show that Nuthatches collected pine bark only when nest sites were situated close to pines, used more mud when breeding close to streams and selected nest sites closer to streams than a sympatric species not using mud, the Pied Flycatcher Ficedula hypoleuca. Nuthatches used pine bark only when there was a pine tree less than 100 m away from the nest box and selected Cistus bark when transport distance was greater. We suggest that the selection of nest sites and nest materials in this species may be constrained by the costs of transporting nest material.


An Al2O3-SiO2-PbO-MgO laminated tape system was prepared to investigate the dependence of some physical properties on various sintering temperatures, 840 °C, 880 °C, 920 °C and 960 °C. The results show that the effect of the increasing sintering temperatures was a fluctuating in the density value of the laminates. It was also observed that the dielectric constant and dielectric loss showed the lowest value for the sintering temperature of 880 °C. SEM micrographs of the laminate samples shows a mixture of grain sizes and the samples had a combination of small and large pores with the average grain size around 2.20-2.64 m.


A major issue in the construction of a database is what data to collect about customers in order to maximise targeting efficiency. The paper examines a variable hitherto neglected by marketers but which has been shown in psychology literature to have significant influence on a wide variety of adult behaviour, including fighter pilot effectiveness. There is evidence that birth order shapes personality, in particular what Sulloway refers to as the "Big Five" personality dimensions. This paper reviews the psychology literature, discusses the potential implications for marketers, in particular database
marketing, and reports on two studies {including a
nationally representative sample of 967 adults} that support the hypothesis thatfirst-borns show a greater need than later-borns to talk to others before and/or after a high involvement purchase. The implications for methods of direct marketing communication and communication content are noted. The simplicity of collecting birth order data, coupled with the ability of neuraf networks software to process many customer variables, e.g. demographic and transactional, in order to optimise targeting efficiency, makes ordinal birth position a prime candidate for inclusion on consumer databases.


To determine the prevalence of urinary incontinence and other urinary symptoms a questionnaire was sent to all women aged 25 and over and to women under 21 taking oral contraceptives registered with a rural practice (n=937); the questionnaire was completed by 833 women (89%). The overall prevalence of urinary incontinence was 41% (343/833); rates were lower in nulliparous and postmenopausal women (30/181 (17%) and 120/344 (35%) respectively) than parous and premenopausal women (313/652 (48%) and 225/479 (47%) respectively). Incontinence was significantly associated with perineal suturing after childbirth, being present in 201 of 376 (53%) women with sutures compared with 113 of 270 (42%) without. Of the 166 women with a history of minor gynaecological surgery, 100 had symptoms of incontinence, compared with 263 of the 657 (37%) without such a history. Incontinence was not related to type of delivery, and postnatal exercises for the pelvic floor were not beneficial. Inappropriate leakage of urine is perceived by many women as common and therefore not serious; thus it is often not reported to the doctor. Nevertheless, the 6% of women who always require protection against leakage could be helped by treatment.


Background: Infections due to hospital-acquired microbes is an evolving problem worldwide. Prevalence as high as 19%, of these infections in developing countries poses a challenge to health-care providers. A major source of horizontal transmission of the nosocomial infections are thought to be bacterial contamination of palm of hand of health care providers such as doctors and nurses. Hand hygiene is the single most cost effective preventive measure against hospital acquired infections and education is an important tool to ensure its implementation. Aim: The present study was undertaken, to demonstrate the presence of resident microbial flora on the hands of nursing staff after duty hours working at various critical areas in a tertiary care hospital with their antibiogram. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional analytical study was carried out after ethical clearance from June to August 2020 on 100 nursing staff of either sex working in critical areas of tertiary care hospital after due informed consent from the nurses. A sterile swab moistened with sterile normal saline was used to collect the swabs from dominant (working) hands after working hours. The collected swabs were processed for isolation, identification, and antibiotic sensitivity of organisms. Results: Out of 100 swabs collected from the dominant hands of nurses working in critical areas, 83 showed the growth. All the samples cultured shows growth of more than two organisms. The major Gram-positive pathogenic organisms grown were Coagulase negative Staphylococcus spp. Forty (48.19%) followed by Staphylococcus aureus 30 (36.14%) whereas among Gram-negative Klebsiella spp. five (6.025%) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa four (4.81%) predominated. Conclusions: In the present study, the level of contamination of nursing staff was found to be high. Resident flora consisting of multi drug resistant pathogenic organisms can be greatly reduced by an increase in hand-hygiene awareness coupled with organizational interventions. We recommend to closely monitoring hand hygiene practices for effective intervention strategies.


This paper discusses the unmarked obligatory fronting of the undergoer argument in the Excessive serial verb
 construction (hereafter SVC) in Mandarin Chinese. Acknowledging the existing description of the semantic-syntactic characteristics
 of the Excessive SVC (see for example, Li 1994, Shen & Peng 2010, Zhang 2014, Fan
 2017), we provide an explicit monoclausal account for the phenomenon of obligatory fronting of the undergoer argument,
 arguing that it directly correlates with the monoclausal structure. By doing so, we contrast our analysis with the existing
 analysis by Fan (2017). Furthermore, we argue that despite the flexible ordering of the
 actor and the undergoer arguments at the similar surface forms of the Excessive SVC, they take different positions in expressions
 that are in different sequences. In this case, the undergoer argument is always the subject; the actor argument functions as an
 external topic when it occurs before the undergoer argument and it shows similarities to an inner topic when it occurs after the
 undergoer argument. Nevertheless, unlike with inner topics, the actor argument that occurs after the subject of the Excessive SVC
 is restricted to the actor/causer role.


Leadership development, service learning, place-based education, and economic revitalization are topics relevant to Extension. We performed an evaluation to determine whether a place-based leadership program in Clermont County, Ohio, helps students develop leadership skills and encourages their return to the community. Program evaluation data collected via a web-based survey indicated that 80% of youths planned to return to the area to live and work, an action that would contribute to revitalization of the community. Extension professionals can use findings from our evaluation as a basis for improving existing programs, structuring new youth leadership initiatives, and communicating the value of place-based youth leadership programs to stakeholders.


To investigate mechanisms of action sequencing, we examined the relationship between timing and sequencing of syllables in Bengalese finch song. An individual's song comprises acoustically distinct syllables organized into probabilistic sequences: a given syllable potentially can transition to several different syllables (divergence points), and several different syllables can transition to a given syllable (convergence points). In agreement with previous studies, we found that more probable transitions at divergence points occur with shorter intersyllable gaps. One intuition for this relationship is that selection between syllables reflects a competitive branching process, in which stronger links to one syllable lead to both higher probabilities and shorter latencies for transitions to that syllable vs. competing alternatives. However, we found that simulations of competitive race models result in overlapping winning-time distributions for competing outcomes and fail to replicate the strong negative correlation between probability and gap duration found in song data. Further investigation of song structure revealed strong positive correlation between gap durations for transitions that share a common convergent point. Such transitions are not related by a common competitive process, but instead reflect a common terminal syllable. In contrast to gap durations, transition probabilities were not correlated at convergence points. Together, our data suggest that syllable selection happens early during the gap, with gap timing determined chiefly by the latency to syllable initiation. This may result from a process in which probabilistic sequencing is first stabilized, followed by a shortening of the latency to syllables that are sung more often.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Bengalese finch songs consist of probabilistic sequences of syllables. Previous studies revealed a strong negative correlation between transition probability and the duration of intersyllable gaps. We show here that the negative correlation is inconsistent with previous suggestions that timing at syllable transitions is governed by a race between competing alternatives. Rather, the data suggest that syllable selection happens early during the gap, with gap timing determined chiefly by the latency to syllable initiation.


Oligomeric forms of the peptide, β-amyloid, (Aβ) are known to be toxic to human and rodent neurones, and have been identified as possible causative agents in the loss of cognitive function in Alzheimer's Disease (AD). An ELISA assay has been developed capable of detecting oligomeric forms of Aβ in biological fluids, but not detecting monomeric species. The ELISA has been validated with a number of synthetic variant sequences of Aβ and the effects of known inhibitors of Aβ oligomer formation. Significantly raised levels of oligomers were detected in sera samples from AD patients, compared to age-matched control sera.


Fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS) may have potential benefits, since they exhibit many soluble dietary fibre-like properties. Foods currently available for weaning infants are generally low in fibre content and lack these potential benefits. Data documenting tolerance of FOS in weaning foods are greatly lacking. Our present objective was to evaluate the tolerance and gastrointestinal effects of FOS-supplemented infant cereal used as a daily addition to the diet of healthy infants. Healthy infants were randomly assigned to receive either 0·75 g FOS per serving of cereal or placebo for 28 d. The primary outcome of interest was gastrointestinal tolerance, which was assessed by daily parental reporting of functional variables for 28 d, including stool patterns and signs and symptoms of gastrointestinal tolerance. Secondary outcomes were also measured including: cereal intake (g cereal and g FOS/d), stool pH, changes in anthropometric measurements and adverse events. The study population included a total of fifty-six infants, age range 16·2–46·2 weeks with a mean age of 32·5 (sd 8·9) weeks; twenty-nine infants were randomized to the control group (age 31·8 (sd 9·0) weeks) and twenty-seven to the FOS-supplemented group (34·7 (sd 8·9) weeks). Average daily total intake per infant and average intake per serving were similar in both groups. Average FOS consumption was 0·74 (sd 0·39) g/d and as high as 3·00 g/d. Stool consistency was less likely to be described as 'hard', and more likely to be described as 'soft' or 'loose', in the FOS v. control group. The mean number of stools per infant was 1·99 (sd 0·62) per d in the FOS-supplemented group compared with 1·58 (sd 0·66) in the control group (P=0·02). There were no differences between the groups in reporting for crying, spitting-up or colic. No differences were found for stool pH. FOS-supplements added to cereal were well tolerated in doses of up to 3·00 g/d. FOS consumption led to more regular and softer stools, without diarrhoea, as well as less-reported frequency of symptoms associated with constipation such as hard stools or skipped days without stool. The present study is one of few studies documenting tolerance to increased fibre intake in the form of FOS as part of a weaning food.


In the absence of data on current or likely patterns of use of magnetic resonance (MR) imaging, use of computed tomography (CT) at one institution in 1981 and 1984 was analyzed to provide data relevant to current federal deliberations regarding Medicare payment for inpatient MR imaging. Between 1981 and 1984 inpatient CT utilization increased 59%, primarily due to a 265% increase in body CT. In 1984 inpatients who underwent at least one CT procedure were as likely to undergo more than one procedure as to undergo only one. CT procedures were performed in a high proportion of diagnosis-related groups (DRGs), with more than one-half of head CT procedures performed in non-neurologic DRGs. Given the similarities between clinical applications of CT and MR imaging, these findings regarding CT utilization have the following implications: (a) a delay in recalibration of DRG payment rates may not take account of expected growth in utilization of MR imaging, (b) a DRG "add-on" for MR imaging should reflect the likelihood that more than one MR imaging procedure will be performed in many hospitalizations, and (c) adjustments in DRG payments for MR imaging should not be limited to the 35 neurologic DRGs.


the constipation, which had been present for many years, abated, and the patient lost weight, and gained alertness and control of behaviour. The patient's persistently hypothermic temperature also returned to normal limits. Her diabetic control improved, but whether this was due to the administration of thyroxine, or to the change to twice-daily insulin administration, or both, remains a matter of conjecture. Interestingly, her mother and older sister, who were both hypothyroid, also had no thyroid antibodies. The absence of any functioning thyroid tissue even with '3'1 scanning would agree with Benda's finding that the thyroid gland in Down's syndrome is hypoplastic.' 0 Murdoch et alii felt that there might be a general reduction in thyroid function in patients with Down's syndrome owing to impaired development of the gland, but that frank chemical hypothyroidism occurred only when thyroiditis was superimposed on pre-existing diminished thyroid reserve." The findings in our patient do not fit this hypothesis, and it would appear to us that some patients with Down's syndrome may develop hypothyroidism purely on the basis of a hypoplastic thyroid gland. The presence of thyroid antibodies in an adult with Down's syndrome is very suggestive of hypothyroidism. Of the five patients with antibodies in Baxter's series." four were hypothyroio, and of the eleven patients with antibodies in Murdoch's series." seven were hypothyroid. The absence of thyroid antibodies, however, does not rule out the diagnosis, as two of the six patients in Baxter's series and six of the 13 patients with hypothyroidism in Murdoch's series" had no thyroid antibodies. A hypoplastic thyroid gland would appear to be of prime importance in the pathogenesis of hypothyroidism in this group, but its significance in those patients with thyroid antibodies appears less. Perhaps the eventual development of hypothyroidism depends on the balance between the degree of hypoplasia of the thyroid gland and the titre of thyroid antibodies. Further thyroid scanning of adult patients with Down's syndrome and its correlation with the ETA, thyroid antibodies and clinical assessment of thyroid status would be helpful. Only one patient from the series of Baxter" and four from the series of Murdocrr' had thyroid antibodies and normal results for thyroid function tests. Finally, we would like to reiterate the importance of biochemical testing for hypothyroidism in adult patients with Down's syndrome and the commencement of appropriate replacement therapy once the diagnosis has been made.


1. Antidromic stimulation of the visual radiation of cats has been used to investigate the possibility that some of the activity in principal geniculate cells following an optic tract stimulus is antidromic. Single spikes were selected from two classes of poststimulus activity to condition the antidromic test spike--the undoubted orthodromic postsynaptic spike and the later spikes, occurring up to 100 ms after the optic tract stimulus. 2. In 15 of 39 cells the minimum antidromic activation times and the minimum spike-spike intervals were found to be shorter and latencies for antidromic stimulation were longer when the conditioning spikes belonged the class of late poststimulus activity. The differences are in accord with the assumption that some of the conditioning spikes were antidromic. 3. Test spikes were frequently found to have long and variable latency when the conditioning spike occurred more than 45 ms after the optic tract stimulus. Possible reasons are briefly discussed. 4. It is suggested that antidromic activity may occur in conditions of the cortex that are more physiological than those associated with a penicillin-induced seizure focus. Some possible mechanisms and functional significance are briefly discussed.


Prototyping can be seen as the heart of the innovation process. Typically, engineers and designers both work on prototyping activities, but their diverse backgrounds make for different perspectives on prototyping. Based on earlier literature, this study investigates commonalities and differences in the prototyping behavior of engineers and designers. For this study, semi-structured interviews and workshops with different experiments were conducted. Using low-fidelity prototypes, our results indicated that there are differences in the early phase of prototyping. Engineers focused on the features and functions of a prototype and needed to meet specific goals in order to push the process forward. Designers, on the other hand, used prototypes to investigate the design space for new possibilities, and were more open to a variety of prototyping materials and tools, especially for low-fidelity prototypes. In the later prototyping phases, the prototyping behaviors of engineers and designers became similar. Our study contributes to the understanding of prototyping purposes, activities, and processes across disciplines, and supports the management of prototyping in new product development processes.


The thalamus relays sensory information to the cortex. Oscillatory activities of the thalamocortical network are modulated by monoamines, acetylcholine, and adenosine, and could be the key features characteristic of different vigilance states. Although the thalamus is almost always subject to the actions of more than just one neuromodulators, reports on the modulatory effect of coexisting neuromodulators on thalamic synaptic transmission are unexpectedly scarce. We found that, if present alone, monoamine or adenosine decreases retinothalamic synaptic strength and short-term depression, whereas cholinergic modulators generally enhance postsynaptic response to presynaptic activity. However, coexistence of different modulators tends to produce non-additive effect, not predictable based on the action of individual modulators. Acetylcholine, acting via nicotinic receptors, can interact with either serotonin or adenosine to abolish most short-term synaptic depression. Moreover, the coexistence of adenosine and monoamine, with or without acetylcholine, results in robustly decreased synaptic strength and transforms short-term synaptic depression to facilitation. These findings are consistent with a view that acetylcholine is essential for an "enriched" sensory flow through the thalamus, and the flow is trimmed down by concomitant monoamine or adenosine (presumably for the wakefulness and rapid-eye movement, or REM, sleep states, respectively). In contrast, concomitant adenosine and monoamine would lead to a markedly "deprived" (and high-pass filtered) sensory flow, and thus the dramatic decrease of monoamine may constitute the basic demarcation between non-REM and REM sleep. The collective actions of different neuromodulators on thalamic synaptic transmission thus could be indispensable for the understanding of network responsiveness in different vigilance states.


CELL BIOLOGY Correction for "ATM signals to TSC2 in the cytoplasm to regulate mTORC1 in response to ROS," by Angela Alexander, Sheng-Li Cai, Jinhee Kim, Adrian Nanez, Mustafa Sahin, Kirsteen H. MacLean, Ken Inoki, Kun-Liang Guan, Jianjun Shen, Maria D. Person, Donna Kusewitt, Gordon B. Mills, Michael B. Kastan, and Cheryl Lyn Walker, which appeared in issue 9, March 2, 2010, of Proc Natl Acad Sci USA (107:4153–4158; first published February 16, 2010; 10.1073/pnas.0913860107). The authors note that in Fig. 2A, the error bars represent SEM (mean ± SEM). In Figs. 3D and 4B, the error bars represent standard deviation (mean ± SD). These corrections do not affect the conclusions of the article.


The 2007 Scottish Local Government Elections saw the first large scale use of the Single Transferable Vote (STV) in a mainland election in Britain. This presented a range of challenges for Scotland's political parties, more familiar with campaigning under first-past-the-post or the Scottish parliament's semi-proportional Additional Member System (AMS). Most crucially, STV meant the parties had to come to terms with multi-member wards and the transferral of votes between parties. Following a short discussion of the results of the STV elections, this article assesses evidence on how the parties adapted to the new electoral system, focussing particularly on candidate and campaign strategies. The article argues that Scotland's parties showed some, but limited, signs of adapting to new electoral conditions. Rather than strategic adjustment, an element of 'hoping for the best' was evident in all parties.


Recently multilevel inverter technology has been a very important alternative in the applications which requires multiple separated DC voltage sources such as solar and fuel cells. But as the number of levels and switching devices which must be used increase circuit becomes more open to faults. Furthermore the complexity of both the circuit and the control method rises. In this paper an improved cascaded multilevel inverter topology which is developed by taking advantage of recent studies is presented. To avoid system to be affected adversely, a control strategy based on harmonic elimination in fundamental frequency with determining switching angles by using Newton-Raphson method is also introduced.


Abstract Background Anti-VEGF target therapy is proven to be effective both in second and third line treatment in metastatic gastric cancer. As for Apatinib, which is the tyrosine kinase inhibitor showed highly affinity for VEGFR2, could not only reverse paclitaxel resistance but also improve the R0 resection rate in previous unresected gastric cancer in conversional settings. However, the safety and efficacy of Apatinib in combination with docetaxel plus S1 in the first line treatment of metastatic gastric cancer is unknown and worthy of investigation. Methods The study was expected to enroll 48 patients diagnosed with metastatic gastric cancer. Each participant was supposed to finish six cycles of chemotherapy plus apatinib (docetaxel 75mg/m2, d1, Q3W; S1 according to BSA: 1.5 60mg po bid; d1-14, Q3W; apatinib 500mg po qd). The toxicity was determined according to CTCAE 4.0. Efficacy assessed every two cycles (6 weeks) during the study and every 2 months after finish the study. The primary endpoint was progression free survival (PFS). The secondary endpoint was OS, the objective response rate (ORR), the disease control rate (DCR). The tumor response was determined according to RECIST 1.1 criteria. Results From July 2017 to April 2019, 32 patients were enrolled. 11 female and 21 male, median age 54 years old, median matastasis organs are 3.5. 80% patients reported adverse events (AEs), most of them are 1-2 AEs. The incidence of grade 3-4 AEs was 35.7%, mainly oral mucositis (23.3%) and myelosuppression (21.5%). For ITT polulation, 24 patients were evaluable for response, 13 patients achieved PR, 4 patients achieved SD, 7 patients experienced PD. The ORR is 54.2%, the DCR is 70.8%. 8 out of 11 per protocol patients have reached primary endpoint, the median PFS is near 6.5 month. Conclusions Combination therapy with docetaxel and S1 plus apatinib as the first line treatment could be well tolerant, the spectrum of toxicity were not exceeding expectation. This modality also exhibits promising efficacy,which might provide a new therapeutic strategy for metastatic gastric cancer. Legal entity responsible for the study The authors. Funding Has not received any funding. Disclosure All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.


Single-chip multi-processor embedded system becomes nowadays a feasible and very interesting option. What is needed however is an environment that supports the designer in transforming an algorithmic specification into a suitable parallel implementation. We present and demonstrate an important component of such an environment-an efficient design space exploration algorithm. The algorithm can be used to semi-automatically find the best parallelization of a given embedded application. It employs functional pipelining and data set partitioning simultaneously with source-to-source program transformations to obtain the most advantageous hierarchical parallelizations.


BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES
Generally filarial antigens have been found to be cross-reactive in nature. Identification of genus and species-specific antigens has not been successful so far. Due to lack of human adult filarial parasite, researchers have been using other adult worms like Setaria digitata, a cattle parasite or Brugia malayi, a rodent model for their research work. In this situation, specificity of the prepared antigen (S. digitata or B. malayi) to detect the antibodies to Wuchereria bancrofti is questionable.

METHODS
In the present investigation, we have tested a panel of human sera (collected from the areas, endemic for bancroftian filariasis) to correlate the immune reactivity against somatic antigens of adult stages and microfilarial stages of S. digitata and B. malayi. Further, using intact microfilariae (mf) from the above two parasites along with W. bancrofti, we have analyzed the antibody response to the sheath antigens. A panel of infected human and cattle sera was tested by immunoperoxidase assay using intact mf of three different parasites, viz. W. bancrofti, B. malayi, and S. digitata.

RESULTS
A very significant positive correlation in filarial Igs (polyvalent), IgG, IgM, IgE and IgG4 levels were found between the two adult somatic antigens of B. malayi and S. digitata when tested against human filarial sera. However, such a correlation was not found when mf antigens of B. malayi and S. digitata were tested against a panel of W. bancrofti sera indicating that antigens present in mf could be far less cross-reactive in comparison to those in adult stage parasites.

INTERPRETATION & CONCLUSION
The results indicated the differential cross-reactivity of antisheath antibodies to the mf sheath of three different filarial parasites. Soluble antigens of S. digitata could inhibit antisheath antibody reactivity to only S. digitata mf sheath and not to mf sheath of W. bancrofti further confirming the specificity of sheath antigen.


Four in ten Americans who currently work from home at least one day a week would seek another job if employers require a full return to business premises. In addition, most employees would look favorably on a new job that offers the same pay and the option to work from home 2 or 3 days a week. These employee attitudes are pushing many employers to permanently alter working arrangements. As of June 2021, employers plan for their employees to spend 1.2 full days per week working from home after the pandemic ends. These planned levels of post-pandemic working from home have risen 23% in the past year. Our survey-based evidence also suggests that high rates of quits and job openings in recent months partly reflect a re-sorting of workers with respect to a newly salient job attribute – namely, the scope for remote work.


To evaluate the feasibility and capability of using filter-feeding bivalves as biofilters for organic waste derived from fish faeces and feed wastage in marine fish culture activities, a poly- culture system comprising fish and green-lipped mussels Perna viridis was developed by transplan- tation of mussels into fish cages. As a control, mussels from the same population were simultaneously transplanted to a distant reference site free of effects from fish farming activities. After 3 mo acclima- tion, samples of mussel tissue, particulate organic matter (POM), fish feed and fish faeces were collected for measurements of carbon and nitrogen isotopic ratios and fatty acid profiles. Enrichment of 13 C and 15 N in mussel tissue collected inside the fish cages as compared to those at the reference site indicated the uptake and assimilation of isotopically heavier fish feed and fish faeces. Compared with mussels from the reference site, the pattern of fatty acid profiles and single fatty acids of mussels in fish cages also tended to be closer to fatty acid profiles of fish feed from fish farms. Based on the concentration-weighted isotope mixing model, the proportions of mussel biomass assimilated from POM, fish feed and fish faeces to mussel dietary consumption were 68.3, 27.5 and 4.2%, respec- tively. The direct uptake of organic waste from fish farms by filter-feeding mussels is different to their consumption of phytoplanktonic biomass, because the nutrient flux is shifted between these 2 distinct pathways.


Due to key differences in the policy priorities of the League and the Five Star Movement, the formation of the yellow-green cabinet, appointed in Italy after the general election of March 2018, cannot adequately be explained by interpreting the main axis of party competition in terms of the classic left-right divide. Relying on a multi-dimensional spatial approach to party competition, this paper attempts to account for the formation of the Conte cabinet by looking at the policy positions of political parties on a number of substantive policy dimensions.We analyse changes in the dimensionality of the policy space of party competition by using data from an expert survey fielded in the aftermath of the 2018 election and by comparing these data with similar expert survey data collected since 2001. Results highlight dramatic changes in the last two decades, showing a gradual decline in the salience of economic issues vis-a-vis an increase in the salience of non-economic domains such as European integration and immigration. We show that the formation of the Conte executive can be understood in light of the closeness of the positions of the two coalition partners on non-economic policy dimensions.


Objective: To understand how adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are associated with co-occurring physical, mental and developmental problems during early childhood. Method: A subsample of 19,957 children aged 2–5 years were selected from the 2011–2012 National Survey for Child Health. Outcomes included 18 health conditions organized in singular condition domains (physical, mental, and developmental), and combinations of condition domains (e.g., physical plus mental, mental plus developmental, etc.). Predictors included 8 ACEs (divorce of a parent, death of a parent, exposure to domestic violence, living with someone with a drug or alcohol abuse problem, household member with a mental illness, parent incarceration, neighborhood violence, discrimination). Multivariable logistic regression was performed controlling for demographic characteristics, having a personal doctor, health insurance coverage, and seeing a health care professional in the previous year. Results: Experiencing 3 or more ACEs before the age of 5 years was associated with increased likelihood of nearly every co-occurring condition combination across 3 domains of health. Most notably, experiencing 3 or more ACEs was also associated with a 2-fold increase in likelihood of having ≥1 physical condition and ≥1 developmental condition, a 9-fold increase in likelihood of having ≥1 mental and ≥1 developmental condition, and a 7-fold increase in likelihood of having ≥1 physical, ≥1 mental, and ≥1 developmental condition. Conclusion: This study demonstrates that we can identify the health effects of adversity quite early in development and that management should include communication between both health care and early childhood education providers.


Immediately following the end of the Reconstruction period, Negro Americans were forced to live in the second wave of racial bondage resulting from the institutionalization of Jim Crow Laws. For Black females, this bondage carried a doubleedged sword, as the weight of this oppression encompassed every aspect of their lives. Unfortunately, many viewed that there was no outlet from this misery. Even before the official end of slavery, free Black women that rose to the middleclass economic status had begun club work and established clubs in their communities. These organizations not only provided a social outlet for these privileged women, but they also ameliorated the lives of the lower working class women club members. From its humble beginnings in 1911, the Phyllis Wheatley YWCA (PW-Y) of St. Louis was destined to be a social icon. The Phyllis Wheatley Committee on Administration (PW-COA), the core management group, emphasized providing religious services and housing for lower classed Black females. As formal educational opportunities were relatively unavailable to poor Blacks, the PW-COA added informal educational programming for young girls to abate that void. By the 1950s, the PW-Y was an integral part of the African American community offering informal education classes, camping, housing, food service, and a facility that entertained as well as hosted meetings for proletarian groups fighting discriminatory practices. Nonetheless, the former core management group, the PW-COA, had no voice in the research literature. Therefore, this study is a historical narrative analysis that gave the present PW-COA members the medium to share the stories of their involvement in the PW-Y. Informally Educating the Community Osby, Cheryl, 2014, UMSL, iv