While violation of the homogeneity of variance assumption has received considerable attention, violation of the assumption of normally distributed data has not received as much attention. As a result, researchers may have the mistaken impression that as long as the assumptions of independence of observations and homogeneity of variance are satisfied, violations of the distributional assumption gave inconsequential effects. This paper reviews some of the relevant literature and reports the results of a new Monte Carlo study indicating that this is not the case. The simulation investigated the effects of varying skewness and kurtosis levels, while maintaining equal population variances, on the two-sample "t" test and Welch's robust "t" test. Sample sizes were either small or moderate, and equal or unequal. Results indicate that, with skewed distributions, the validity of both the "t" test and the Welch test clearly depends on the two distributions being skewed in the same direction. When the two parent distributions are skewed in the same direction, both tests have quite acceptable Type I error rates, even with relatively small samples. However, when the two parent distributions are skewed in opposite directions, then the true Type I error rates can deviate markedly from the nominal level even though population variances are equal. The actual Type I error rate of the "t" test performed at a 0.05 nominal level with homogeneous variances can be higher than 0.08 with a two-tailed test, and can be higher than 0.11 with a one-tailed test. (Contains 16 figures and 23 references.) (SLD) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. Nonnormality Effects on t 1 THE EFFECT OF NONNORMALITY ON STUDENT'S TWO-SAMPLE T TEST PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) Harold D. Delaney Department of Psychology, UNM, USA Andras Vargha Institute of Psychology, ELTE, Hungary Please address all correspondence concerning this manuscript to: Harold Delaney Department of Psychology University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM 87131 E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com Author Note U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDU ATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. Much of the work reported herein resulted from the collaborative efforts of Drs. Vargha and Delaney while Vargha was a Szechenyi Professor Scholar and supported by Hungarian OTKA, grant Nos.: TO18353 and T032157. Vargha's work was also supported by the Hungarian FKFP grant No. 0194/2000 and the Research Support Scheme of the Open Society Support Foundation, grant No.: 584/1998.


The transmissibility of HIV infection through blood transfusion has resulted in many altered ideas about blood transfusion and a re-evaluation of the indications for transfusion. Because of the risks of transfusion, the increased emphasis on proper use of hospital resources and the increasing number of managed care patients, a continuing emphasis on the appropriate indications for transfusion can be anticipated.


On-line partial discharge monitoring has been the subject of significant research in previous years but little work has been carried out with regard to the management of on-site data. To date, on-line partial discharge monitoring within a substation has only been concerned with single plant items, so the data management problem has been minimal. As the age of plant equipment increases, so does the need for condition monitoring to ensure maximum lifespan. This paper presents an approach to the management of partial discharge data through the use of embedded monitoring techniques running on wireless sensor nodes. This method is illustrated by a case study on partial discharge monitoring data from an ageing HVDC reactor.


A compilation of geochemical data from >50 active volcanoes where seismically defi ned Moho depth measurements are available, representing most volcanic arcs around the world, indicates a relation exists between crustal thickness (Moho depth) and the trace element composition of basalts. The best correlation exists for maximum light/heavy rare earth element (REE) ratios, and we use maximum Ce/Y (R2 = 0.90) to show the exponential function with increasing depth, to 50 km. Application to New Zealand, part of the eastern Gondwanan margin through much of the Phanerozoic, shows that higher Ce/Y ratios in arc basalts correspond to two periods of recognized crustal thickening, plus an additional event at ca. 240 Ma, which links New Zealand to the Gondwanide Orogeny. Conversely, low Ce/Y ratios in basalts correlate with periods of recognized extension in eastern Gondwana. Very high Ce/Y ratios in ca. 120 Ma rocks imply an unusually thickened (~50 km) arc crust, consistent with independent geological estimates of crustal thickness at that time. The correlation shows that crustal thickness variations during orogenesis can be conservatively estimated to within ±3 km.


YACR2 is a channel router that minimizes the number of through vias in addition to the area used to complete the routing in a two-layer channel. It can route channels with cyclic constraints and uses a virtual grid. YACR2 uses preferably one layer for the horizontal segments of the nets and the other for the vertical ones but it may require the routing of a few horizontal segments in the second layer. Experimentally YACR2 performs better than any of the channel routers proposed thus far both in terms of area used and through vias. It routed the Deutsch Difficult Example in density with substantially less vias than Burstein's hierarchical router and with the default parameter values in less than 3 s of CPU time on a VAX 11/780.


Summary
The structure of the iridescent virus type I was examined using negative staining technique. After storage for 1 to 2 months at 4 °C or treatment with chloroform, the icosahedral capsid breaks up into its structural elements — pentagons and triangles, each consisting of 31 and 55 subunits respectively. When such a preparation is centrifuged through a linear sucrose gradient (10 to 40%), 5 zones are revealed. An electron microscopic analysis showed the following distribution of the material (from top to bottom of the tube): (1) free triangles; (2) associated triangles, 'core'; (3) partially disrupted virions; (4) free intact virus particles; (5) virus aggregates.
A model for iridescent virus type I capsid is proposed, consisting of 12 pentagons (372 subunits) and 20 triangles (1100 subunits). The total number of subunits is 1472.


Most current semantic segmentation methods rely on fully convolutional networks (FCNs). However, their use of large receptive fields and many pooling layers cause low spatial resolution inside the deep layers. This leads to predictions with poor localization around the boundaries. Prior work has attempted to address this issue by post-processing predictions with CRFs or MRFs. But such models often fail to capture semantic relationships between objects, which causes spatially disjoint predictions. To overcome these problems, recent methods integrated CRFs or MRFs into an FCN framework. The downside of these new models is that they have much higher complexity than traditional FCNs, which renders training and testing more challenging. In this work we introduce a simple, yet effective Convolutional Random Walk Network (RWN) that addresses the issues of poor boundary localization and spatially fragmented predictions with very little increase in model complexity. Our proposed RWN jointly optimizes the objectives of pixelwise affinity and semantic segmentation. It combines these two objectives via a novel random walk layer that enforces consistent spatial grouping in the deep layers of the network. Our RWN is implemented using standard convolution and matrix multiplication. This allows an easy integration into existing FCN frameworks and it enables end-to-end training of the whole network via standard back-propagation. Our implementation of RWN requires just 131 additional parameters compared to the traditional FCNs, and yet it consistently produces an improvement over the FCNs on semantic segmentation and scene labeling.


Home energy costs comprise a significant fraction of household budgets, particularly for poor families. This paper analyzes how household consumption responds to changes in home energy outlays over the course of the year. We specify Euler equations describing nondurable and food consumption and then rely on changes in energy prices and weather severity to identify exogenous changes in disposable income. We distinguish changes in energy spending that are anticipated, for instance because it is winter in the Northeast, from those that are unanticipated, for instance because it is an unusually cold winter. We find little evidence of excess sensitivity to anticipated variation among households in the Consumer Expenditure Survey 1990-2002, even among those without substantial financial assets. However, the latter group experiences large consumption reactions to unanticipated changes.


Rewarding system and reinforcement have often been used in language teaching, and they have been used to help improve students' academic achievements, and learning competition and control desirable behaviours in the English learning classroom. This exploratory study investigates students' perceptions of the use of rewards in the classroom for enhancing behaviours and self-development. Participants were 29 mattayom 5 high school students (Grade 11) who studied a fundamental English course in Samut Sakhon Province on the outskirts of Bangkok.  The rewarding system was then designed to be used during the 12-week sessions. The course was divided into 3 phases, and each phase lasted for 4 weeks. No rewards were given to students in the first phase, and all rewards were given in the second and third phases. At the end of week 4, 8 and 12, participants were required to write reflective journals to examine their perceptions toward the use of rewards. The journals were analysed via thematic content analysis. The findings revealed that receiving rewards influenced students' positive emotions - enjoyment, excitement, relaxation and engagement. The findings also showed that they were highly satisfied with the use of rewards which enhanced their self-development since a teacher used them as external goals. Rewards were used as positive reinforcement for learning behaviour. The use of rewards was also used to build more powerful activities in the classroom.


We study the electronic and magnetic properties of L1$_0$ phase of FeNi, a perspective rare-earth-free permanent magnet, by using a combination of density functional and dynamical mean-field theory. Although L1$_0$ FeNi has a slightly tetragonally distorted fcc lattice, we find that magnetic properties of its constituent Fe atoms resemble those in pure bcc Fe. In particular, our results indicate the presence of well-localized magnetic moments on Fe sites, which are formed due to Hund's exchange. At the same time, magnetism of Ni sites is much more itinerant. Similarly to pure bcc Fe, the self-energy of Fe $3d$ states is found to show the non-Fermi-liquid behavior. This can be explained by peculiarities of density of Fe $3d$ states, which has pronounced peaks near the Fermi level. Our study of local spin correlation function and momentum dependence of particle-hole bubble suggests that the magnetic exchange in this substance is expected to be of RKKY-type, with iron states providing local-moment contribution, and the states corresponding to nickel sites (including virtual hopping to iron sites) providing itinerant contribution.


Low-latency telerobotics can enable more intricate surface tasks on extraterrestrial planetary bodies than has ever been previously attempted. In order for humanity to create a sustainable lunar presence, well-developed collaboration between humans and robots is necessary to perform complex tasks. This paper presents a methodology to assess the human factors, situational awareness (SA) and cognitive load (CL), associated with teleoperated assembly tasks. Currently, telerobotic assembly on an extraterrestrial body has never been attempted, and a valid methodology to assess the associated human factors has not been developed. The Telerobotics Laboratory at the University of Colorado-Boulder created the Telerobotic Simulation System (TSS) which enables remote operation of a rover and a robotic arm. The TSS was used in a laboratory experiment designed as an analog to a lunar mission. The operator's task was to assemble a radio interferometer. Each participant completed this task under two conditions, remote teleoperation (limited SA) and local operation (optimal SA). The goal of this experiment was to establish a methodology to accurately measure the operator's SA and CL while performing teleoperated assembly tasks. A successful methodology would yield results showing greater SA and lower CL while operating locally. Performance metrics measured in this experiment showed greater SA and lower CL in the local environment, supported by a 27% increase in the mean time to completion of the assembly task when operating remotely. Subjective measurements of SA and CL did not align with the performance metrics. This brought into question the validity of the subjective assessments used in this experiment when applied to telerobotic assembly tasks. Results from this experiment will guide future work attempting to accurately quantify the human factors associated with telerobotic assembly. Once an accurate methodology has been developed, we will be able to measure how new variables affect an operator's SA and CL in order to optimize the efficiency and effectiveness of telerobotic assembly tasks.


This is a study about what is considered to be a good text and if an element like many adjectives would have an impact on that fact. In order to find this out texts have been handed out to two teachers who were asked to grade them and also comment on why they had given the texts that particular grade. The aim of this study was to see if a text with many adjectives would be considered to be better than a text with few adjectives. The conclusion of this study is that if two texts are equally as good in every other area, when it comes to writing, the text with more adjectives would be considered to be better. It would then contain more depth and life. If however the text with most adjectives were full of spelling mistakes, grammatical errors and so on the amount of adjectives would not matter. Language correctness and fluency is considered to be more important than denseness of adjectives.


Abstract Shortly after it was first introduced in 2006, differential privacy became the flagship data privacy definition. Since then, numerous variants and extensions were proposed to adapt it to different scenarios and attacker models. In this work, we propose a systematic taxonomy of these variants and extensions. We list all data privacy definitions based on differential privacy, and partition them into seven categories, depending on which aspect of the original definition is modified. These categories act like dimensions: variants from the same category cannot be combined, but variants from different categories can be combined to form new definitions. We also establish a partial ordering of relative strength between these notions by summarizing existing results. Furthermore, we list which of these definitions satisfy some desirable properties, like composition, postprocessing, and convexity by either providing a novel proof or collecting existing ones.


Steel plate bonding technology is widely accepted for the strengthening of reinforced concrete structures. Researches in the past showed that epoxy bonded steel plated composite beams are highly prone to variation in temperature and environmental conditions. This research study introduces a novel approach to steel plate composite beam in which bond between the concrete and the steel plate is provided by welding the steel plate to the legs of the uniformly spaced stirrups. Experimental investigation showed that the parameters such as interface connections, geometric dimensions, stirrups spacing and thickness of steel plate have a great influence on the strength, deformation and failure characteristics of such composite beams. A finite element model has been developed using commercial software, ABAQUS, to predict the strength of such composite beams and its performance is validated through experimental results. The direct finite element simulation of proposed composite beams with developed finite element model gives an average of experimental to predicted strength ratio of 0.99, which comfirms the accuracy of prediction. The finite element model is then used to simulate a large number of numerical beams with varying geometric and material properties to formulate design guidelines. Design charts are developed and their performance is validated through test results with experimental to design chart predictions giving an average value of 0.94. Design procedures for such beams are illustrated with calculated design examples. Such simple design procedures can be adopted in the actual design of proposed composite beams in practical applications.


The reason reformers cloak their plans for changing the campaign finance system in the language of corruption is because of the Supreme Court. In Buckley v. Valeo, the 1976 case that put corruption at the center of campaign finance law, the Supreme Court held that the only compelling justification that could be used to impose limits on campaign contributions is the government's interest in preventing "corruption" and the "appearance of corruption." All other justifications have led to laws being struck down for violating the freedoms of the First Amendment. This Article argues, however, that the Court's corruption paradigm has now outlived its usefulness. It has been inconsistently applied, and it has led to more confusion than clarity. Because new legislation regulating campaign finance is likely to be struck down by the Court, Congress no longer has the stomach to regulate in this area. For this reason, this article argues that champions of campaign finance reform need to find a new path forward. One such path that this Article proposes is to let Congress regulate campaign finance through its internal ethics rules.


We present the contribution of the Unbabel team to the WMT 2019 Shared Task on Quality Estimation. We participated on the word, sentence, and document-level tracks, encompassing 3 language pairs: English-German, English-Russian, and English-French. Our submissions build upon the recent OpenKiwi framework: We combine linear, neural, and predictor-estimator systems with new transfer learning approaches using BERT and XLM pre-trained models. We compare systems individually and propose new ensemble techniques for word and sentence-level predictions. We also propose a simple technique for converting word labels into document-level predictions. Overall, our submitted systems achieve the best results on all tracks and language pairs by a considerable margin.


A portion of radius including the proximal epiphysis was either transplanted or excised and replaced in puppies. In these growing animals, growth in long bone grafts vascularized by periosteal and endosteal vessels but not epiphyseal vessels, was significantly greater than in nonvascularized grafts, but was less than normal growth (63 percent to 67 percent of normal). In nonvascularized grafts, the epiphyses closed one month postoperatively, while they closed at five months in vascularized grafts and at six months in normal controls. This study confirms that approximately two-thirds of normal longitudinal bone growth can be accomplished with a bone transplant that includes a vascular pedicle supplying the endosteum and periosteum, but not the physis.


We investigated fault current limitation characteristics of the resistive superconducting fault current limiter (SFCL) which consisted of a Bi-2212 bulk coil and a shunt coil. The Bi-2212 bulk coil and the shunt coil were connected in parallel. The Bi-2212 bulk coil was placed inside the shunt coil to induce field-assisted quench. The fault test was conducted at an input voltage of 200 V rms and fault current of 12 ㎄ rms and 25 ㎄ rms . The fault conditions were asymmetric and symmetric, and the fault period was 5 cycles. The test results show that the SFCL successfully limited the fault current of 12 ㎄ rms and 25 ㎄ rms to below 5.5 ~ 6.9 ㎄ peak within 0.64 ~ 2.17 msec after the fault occurred. Limitation was faster under symmetric fault test condition due to the larger change rate of current. We concluded that the speed of fault current limitation was determined by the speed of current rise rather than the amplitude of a short circuit current. These results show that the Bi-2212 bulk coil is suitable for distribution-class SFCLs.


Background: Currently, work-related musculoskeletal disorders are a significant public health concern and are one of the leading causes of disability-adjusted life years and reducing quality of life. Therefore, the current study aimed to provide the country-wide prevalence of work-related musculoskeletal disorders, particularly shoulder and neck pain, in Ethiopia.Methods: This study considered studies conducted in Ethiopia, written in English and published in 2017-2020 and searched using included electronic databases such as PubMed/MEDLINE, Web of Science, Google Scholar, CINAHL, SCOPUS, Embase, African Index Medicus, and African Journals Online database. The quality assessment of the studies was done using Joanna Briggs Institute Critical Assessment tools to determine the relevance of each included article to the study.Results: The study found that the pooled prevalence of shoulder and neck pain in the previous year represented 37.9% [95% CI:26.5, 50.8%] and 29.9% [95% CI: 20.1, 41.9], respectively. Based on the subgroup analysis, the pooled prevalence of shoulder pain in the last year based on the study population, publication year and study region was 47.6% [95% CI: 45.8, 49.4%], 49.8% [95% CI: 45.7, 53.9%] and 44.6% [95% CI: 41.4, 47.8%], respectively, while the pooled prevalence of neck pain in the last year based on the study population, publication year and study area was 39.1% (95% CI: 37.5, 40.7%], 25.1% [ 95% CI: 20.8, 29.9%] and 32.6% [95% CI: 29.8, 35.5%], respectively.Conclusions This study found that at least one third of the study participants had experienced occupational-related shoulder and/or neck pain the previous year. The study suggests that there is a need to implement occupational health and safety to reduce work-related musculoskeletal disorders and other hazards.


IMPROVING PROGNOSTIC MODELS IN BREAST CANCER WITH BIOSTATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF THE PI3-KINASE PATHWAY. Elliot James Rapp, Jena P. Giltnane, David L. Rimm, Annette Molinaro. Department of Biostatistics, Yale School of Public Health, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT. Our hypothesis was that prognostic models for breast cancer that incorporate both clinical variables and biomarkers in the PI3 Kinase molecular pathway will improve upon the clinical models of TNM staging and the Nottingham Prognostic Index (NPI). Our specific aim was to develop models that misclassify fewer patients than TNM and NPI with the outcome of dead of disease at ten years. Our population cohort was the YTMA49 cohort, a series of 688 samples of invasive ductal breast carcinoma collected between 1961 and 1983 by the Yale University Department of Pathology. Tissue MicroArray (TMA) analysis was performed and biomarker expression level was determined using Automated Quantitative Analysis (AQUA) technology for thirteen biomarkers in the PI3 Kinase pathway, including an overall expression level and expression levels by subcellular compartment. Eleven clinical variables were also assembled from our cohort. Exhaustively searching the multivariate space, we used logistic regression to predict our outcome of dead of disease at ten years. Validation was performed using Leave One Out Cross Validation (LOOCV). Misclassification estimates provided the means to compare different models, with lower misclassification estimates indicating superior models. Confidence intervals were constructed using bootstrapping with one thousand iterations. We developed a helper computer program named Combination Magic to enable us to develop sophisticated models that included both interactions between variables and transformations of variables (e.g. logarithm). Overall our best univariate models were NPI (misclassification estimate (ME): 0.326, confidence interval (CI): 0.292 to 0.359), Nodal status (ME: 0.353, CI: 0.322 to 0.493), and TNM (ME: 0.367, CI: 0.313 to 0.447). Our best univariate models from the PI3 Kinase biomarkers were FOX01_NU (ME: 0.369, CI: 0.336 to 0.415), AKT1_TM (ME: 0.373, CI: 0.335 to 0.412), and PI3Kp110_TM (ME: 0.377, CI: 0.343 to 0.431). Our best bivariate models were pTumor*PathER (ME: 0.328, CI: 0.308 to 0.443), pNode + NuGrade (ME: 0.333, CI: 0.305 to 0.434), and AKT1_NN + Fox01_NU (ME: 0.338, CI: 0.307 to 0.391). Our best trivariate models were pTumor + mTOR_NN + PI3Kp110_TM + pTumor*PI3Kp110_TM (ME: 0.296, CI: 0.273 to 0.375), pTumor + AKT1_NU + Fox01_NU + pTumor*AKT1_NU (ME: 0.298, CI: 0.275 to 0.38), and pTumor + mTOR_TM + PI3Kp110_TM + pTumor*PI3Kp110_TM (ME: 0.299, CI: 0.276 to 0.378). Our best multi-variate model was Fox01_NU + AKT1_NU + mTOR_MB + p70S6K_NU + AVG_BCL2_TM + Fox01_NU*AKT1_NU*mTOR_MB (ME: 0.295, CI: 0.274 to 0.393). None of these models was statistically superior to the clinical models of TNM and NPI.


AIMS
The aim of this study was to determine whether there is an increased prevalence of scoliosis in patients who have suffered from a haematopoietic malignancy in childhood.

METHODS
Patients with a history of lymphoma or leukaemia with a current age between 12 and 25 years were identified from the regional paediatric oncology database. The medical records and radiological findings were reviewed, and any spinal deformity identified. The treatment of the malignancy and the spinal deformity, if any, was noted.

RESULTS
From a cohort of 346 patients, 19 (5.5%) had radiological evidence of scoliosis, defined as a Cobb angle of > 10°. A total of five patients (1.4% of the total cohort) had a Cobb angle of > 40°, all of whom had corrective surgery. No patient with scoliosis had other pathology as a possible cause of the scoliosis and all had been treated with high doses of steroids for leukaemia, either acute or chronic myeloid, or acute lymphoblastic.

CONCLUSION
There is an increased prevalence of idiopathic-like scoliosis and larger curves (Cobb angle of > 40°) associated with childhood leukaemia, which has not been previously reported in the literature. Causative factors may relate to the underlying disease process and/or its treatment. Cite this article: Bone Joint J 2021;103-B(8):1400-1404.


In this paper and presentation, we will focus on different aspects of backscattering-based wireless communication and power transfer to small biomedical implants. We will present three different antenna topologies for data and power transfer through tissue, in vitro and in vivo studies on implantable intracranial pressure (ICP) sensors and give insight and analysis on wireless link reliability in tissue environment. We will also present radio frequency identification (RFID) -based implant platform and communication method. Moreover, we will focus on differences and challenges of in vivo environment compared to laboratory phantoms and tissue models. In our studies, different types of implantable antennas have been tested to investigate reliability, accuracy and sensitivity of the brain implants: a hybrid near field-far field system with a piezoresistive sensor for ICP monitoring [2], [4], a UHF band spilt-ring resonator system [3] and LC tank based miniature implantable antenna [5]. This paper will present these implant antennas and wireless power transfer in tissue environment present in human head.


The relation between agricultural land development of inland-valleys and health population has been studied in a town of the Ivorian forest area using urinary schistosomiasis as an indicator. Snails were collected during 4 months in rice fields and water holes used for market gardening of two urban inland-valleys (Batagnihi and Gakognihi). Prevalence of schistosomiasis was evaluated in two districts, Kennedy II and Fadiga, located close to the investigated inland-valleys. Schistosomiasis risk was higher in the Batagnihi where rice cultivation was more developed and prevalence of urinary schistosomiasis was higher in the Kennedy II district which is close to this inland-valley particularly among the Northern migrant people. The Kennedy II population has much more contacts with the inland-valley because of rice cultivation and social status. The higher socio-economic level of the Fadiga population limiting its contacts with the inland-valley can explain this result.


Numerous theoretical frameworks have been developed to explain the gap between the possession of environmental knowledge and environmental awareness, and displaying pro-environmental behavior. Although many hundreds of studies have been undertaken, no definitive explanation has yet been found. Our article describes a few of the most influential and commonly used analytical frameworks: early US linear progression models; altruism, empathy and prosocial behavior models; and finally, sociological models. All of the models we discuss (and many of the ones we do not such as economic models, psychological models that look at behavior in general, social marketing models and that have become known as deliberative and inclusionary processes or procedures (DIPS)) have some validity in certain circumstances. This indicates that the question of what shapes pro-environmental behavior is such a complex one that it cannot be visualized through one single framework or diagram. We then analyze the factors that have been found to have some influence, positive or negative, on pro-environmental behavior such as demographic factors, external factors (e.g. institutional, economic, social and cultural) and internal factors (e.g. motivation, pro-environmental knowledge, awareness, values, attitudes, emotion, locus of control, responsibilities and priorities). Although we point out that developing a model that tries to incorporate all factors might neither be feasible nor useful, we feel that it can help illuminate this complex field. Accordingly, we propose our own model based on the work of Fliegenschnee and Schelakovsky (1998) who were influenced by Fietkau and Kessel (1981).


In the 1841 essay "Self-Reliance" Ralph Waldo Emerson presupposed a democratic society of free and equal individuals – an idealized America with a veil drawn over racial slavery. As his own commitment to the antislavery cause deepened over time Emerson sought to reconcile his ideal of self-reliance with organized political action necessary to fight slavery. Recent scholarship has corrected the previously dominant image of Emerson as detached from politics and indifferent to abolitionism. But even as he participated in it, Emerson saw antislavery activism as a distraction from his own proper work of freeing "imprisoned spirits, imprisoned thoughts, far back in the brain of man." Abolitionists, with their single-minded pursuit of a cause, seemed to Emerson to have only a "platform existence, and no personality." Emerson's philosophy of Self-Reliance privileged individual over collective action, and personal experience over concern for distant evils. Emerson was most successful in synthesizing self-reliance with abolitionism when he urged resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law: individuals who resisted the law displayed self-reliance of the kind Emerson celebrated. He also admired the self-reliance of individual fugitive slaves, despite his doubts about the capacities of the black race in general and his ranking Anglo-Saxons over other races and peoples. Beyond resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law, Emerson's philosophy of Self-Reliance provided less clear guidance for fighting slavery, and Emerson himself vibrated among several contradictory strategies. His support for peaceful, compensated emancipation within an intact Union was irreconcilable with his support for the violent measures of John Brown, whom he celebrated as the model of American self-reliance. In the 1860 essay "Fate" Emerson reformulates the ideal of self-reliance in a way that reflects the escalating sectional crisis: only through cold-eyed recognition of necessity, he argues, can one preserve a measure of self-reliance in a world that frustrates our will. This reformulation of self-reliance is more suited to human beings living through an inescapable political crisis, and in that respect an advance over the 1841 version. But it depends for its success on clearer comprehension of political causality than Emerson ever achieved.


An examination is an important component of any institution that educates people. It is a form of assessment used to measure the students' understanding of the concepts and principles they would have learnt. Zimbabwe Open University, an Open and Distance Learning institution has been setting its own examinations for the academic programmes offered. Through examinations, ZOU students are encouraged to take an active role in analysing and questioning the things they would have learnt. This paper discusses the examinations management at ZOU with a special focus on the setting, administering, marking right up to the publication of results. It will also discuss the challenges that ZOU is facing in conducting examinations. It will finally emerge with some valuable practical suggestions on how ZOU can improve on its examination management and thereby achieve quality assurance in all its programmes. The investigation adopted the qualitative methodology and a case study design to generate data to address the questions which guided the study. The purposively sampled sample was drawn from ZOU's National Centre, Bulawayo and Matabeleland North Regions. The sample consisted of manager -examinations, managerquality control, chairpersons of departments from different faculties, programme leaders, programme coordinators, regional quality coordinators, regional administrators, and students who were in their second year of study. Face-to-face interviews were used to generate data from manager -examinations, manager- quality control, regional quality coordinators and regional administrators. Data from chairpersons of departments from different faculties, programme leaders, programme coordinators, second year students were generated through focus group discussions. Major findings were the management of examinations at ZOU enhances quality assurance, cited activities which contributed to quality assurance included setting of examination items for the item banks, tight security in the transporting of examination items to and from the regions, residential marking, active invigilation. Participants were aware of activities that compromised quality assurance such as uncommitted invigilators, incomplete examination, lack of clarity on instructions, lack of security and non-confidentiality of examination items, timetable alterations. Some of the challenges that were mentioned by participants were unrealistic deadlines set by academic registry regarding marking, delays in dispatching of Personal Identification Numbers to newly admitted students, welfare of invigilators during invigilation, and the need for communication between invigilators and other relevant authorities if the need arise when the examination is in progress.


OBJECTIVES
The objective of this clinical study was to evaluate the effect of a bisphosphonate coating on a titanium implant on the implant stability quotient (ISQ) and the radiographic marginal bone levels at implants during early healing (2-8 weeks).

MATERIALS AND METHODS
In a randomized double-blind trial with internal controls, 16 patients received a dental implant coated with zoledronate and one uncoated implant as a control. The coated and uncoated implants which were visually indistinguishable were bone level titanium implants with a moderately rough surface and a microthreaded neck. ISQ values were obtained at insertion and at 2, 4, 6, and 8 weeks. Radiographs were obtained at insertion and at 8 weeks. The primary outcome was the difference in ISQ values between the coated implants and the control implants at 4 and 6 weeks, corrected for insertion values. The secondary outcome was loss of marginal bone level from insertion to 8 weeks.

RESULTS
Implant stability quotient values remained largely constant over the 8 weeks, and there was no significant difference between coated and uncoated implants at any time point. There was 0.12 (SD 0.10) mm marginal bone loss at the control implants and 0.04 (SD 0.08) mm at the coated implants. The difference was 0.17 mm; SD 0.14; p < 0.006). On blind qualitative scoring, 13 of the 15 control implants and two of 15 coated implants showed small marginal bone defects (p = 0.003).

CONCLUSIONS
There were no statistically significant differences observed in ISQ values between the coated and uncoated implants during the early healing. There was less marginal bone loss at the coated implants.


Text plays an important role in daily life because of its rich information, thus automatic text detection in natural scenes has many attractive applications. However, detecting and recognising such text is always a challenging problem. In this study, the authors propose a method which extends the widely-used stroke width transform by two steps of edge analysis, namely candidate edge recombination and edge classification. A new method that recognises text through candidate edge recombination and candidate edge recognition is also proposed. In the step of candidate edge recombination, they use the idea of over-segmentation and region merging. To separate text edge from background, the edge of the input image is first divided into small segments. Then, neighbour edge segments are merged, if they have similar stroke width and colour. Through this step, each character is described by one candidate boundary. In the step of boundary classification, candidate boundaries are aggregated into text chains, followed by chain classification using character-based and chain-based features. To recognise text, the grey image is extracted based on the location of each candidate edge after the step of candidate edge recombination. Then, histogram of gradient features and a classifier are used to recognise each character. To evaluate the effectiveness of their method, the algorithm is run on the ICDAR competition dataset and Street View Text database. The experimental results show that the proposed method provides promising performance in comparison with the existing methods.


Functional roles of external pH on the Cl- conductance were examined on Xenopus oocytes expressing rat recombinant alpha1beta2gamma2L and alpha1beta2 GABAA receptors. Acidic pH inhibited GABA-response in a reversible and concentration-dependent manner, significantly increasing the EC50 without appreciably changing the slope or maximal currents induced by GABA in the alpha1beta2gamma2L and alpha1beta2 receptors. In contrast, protonation did not influence the pentobarbital-gated currents in the alpha1beta2gamma2L receptors, suggesting that protons do not modulate channel activity by directly affecting the channel gating process. Protons competitively inhibited the bicuculline-induced antagonism on GABA in the alpha1beta2gamma2L receptors. The data support the hypothesis that protons inhibit GABAA receptor function by direct or allosteric interaction with the GABA-binding site.


This study was carried out to evaluate 40 kenaf accessions for forage yield and quality at Universiti Putra Malaysia in 2009. Forage yield and quality traits were measured at the initial flowering stage. The kenaf accessions showed highly significant variation for most of trait studied. Plant dry matter yield ranged from 5286 kg ha -1 (Everglade 41) to 16801 kg ha -1 (IX51). Crude protein content of the leaf ranged from 13.6% (G46) to 22.3% (75-71) and it was higher than stem which is ranged from 2.7 % (FDW-75-8) to 7.5 % (K465/117). Leaf ADF were significantly different among the accessions, where FDW 75-82 gave the highest (24.7%) while C74 gave the lowest (16%). Broad-sense heritability was highest for days to flowering (h B 2 = 97.6%) and lowest for CP of stem (h 2 = 11.2 %). In conclusion IX51, Cuba2032 (with high yield), 75-71 and Everglade 41 (with high CP content), were the most superior among the 40 kenaf accessions evaluated and were found highly potential for forage. These accessions can therefore be utilized in further breeding programs to produce new kenaf varieties with high feed value for ruminant consumption. Keywords : kenaf; forage; crude protein (CP); acid detergent fiber (ADF); ruminant feed.


Objective: This study aimed at discussing influences of combined clinical nursing path on negative emotions and living quality of patients co-infected with Ulcerative Colitis (UC) and lower gastrointestinal hemorrhage.
Method: A total of 84 patients co-infected with UC and lower gastrointestinal hemorrhage and admitted to our hospital from March 2016-2017 were selected as research objects and randomly divided into observation and control groups with 42 patients in each group. The control group was given conventional medical nursing, whereas the observation group was provided with pertinent clinical nursing practices, such as diet nursing, health education, and psychological intervention, based on the control group. Nursing effects on the two groups were observed and compared.
Results: The two groups did not show any difference in anxiety and depression scores before combined clinical nursing path (P>0.05). After corresponding nursing measures were respectively taken, anxiety 36.26 ± 9.54 and depression 37.90 ± 8.03 scores of the observation group were both significantly lower than those of the control group. Comparative differences between the two groups presented statistical significance (P<0.05). The two groups exhibited difference in distribution of satisfaction degrees (P<0.05). Satisfaction degree (95.24%) in the observation group was significantly higher than that in the control group (76.19%) according to further statistical analysis, and comparative differences between the two groups indicated statistical significance (P<0.05). Living quality score 3.97 ± 1.04 of the observation group was significantly higher 3.11 ± 0.95 than that of the control group after nursing, and comparative differences between the two groups yielded statistical significance (P<0.05).
Conclusion: Combined clinical nursing path can significantly improve negative emotions and living quality of patients co-infected with UC and lower gastrointestinal hemorrhage.


Aim of the study: In modern conditions, it is necessary to use new approaches to both the analysis of company reporting and the analysis of certain aspects of economic activity, based on the interests of stakeholders. In the internal management, it is necessary to move to operational analytics on the basis of big data and to automate the adoption of operational and strategic decisions. External users are interested in the results of corporate analysis of the company's activities and prospects for its operation in external competitive environment. Methodology: In the article, the authors propose to synthesize intra-economic analysis with technical, technological by converting natural production indicators, for example, hours of work, into a cost form. Conclusion: The authors believe that it should in theory and in practice, to go in company management from economic analysis on the basis of reporting the analysis on the basis of accounting, i.e. go to operational intelligence, subject to global trends. After all, it is on the basis of primary operational accounting that the modern approach of studying and analyzing big data (Big Data) is built around the world. As noted in the literature and in this article, the concept of turning traditional Analytics into operational is not new, however, in the past, this concept was rarely implemented in practice.


The main objective of this paper is to investigate how different levels of GDP and unemployment influence the voluntary activity participation rate. By considering data for Italian regions and for the EU28 Member States, a log-linear model is used to analyses if and how different economic conditions can influence volunteering. Main results from this study show that the lower unemployment rates and the higher income levels are associated with the higher voluntary activity participation rate. Different elasticity however exists between Italian regions and EU28 Member States. The voluntary activity participation rate in Italy has been shown to be more sensitive to GDP variations than the European one. On the contrary, changes on employment generate higher volunteering variations in EU28 than in Italy. The results provided in this paper can be useful for policies and further researches oriented to investigate how economic conditions can influence voluntary activity participation rate.


Several attempts have been proposed in the literature to relax the restrictive assumptions of a standalone input-output model. Particularly, endogenisation of the household sector, which exhibits the highest constant returns to scale, has been continuously recognised as a key objective of such attempts. This objective increases in importance as we move from national to regional economies. Most of the studies in the literature collapse the intermediate demand information into a solo composite variable. The intermediate demand information serves as a priori data, which represents the inter-sectoral relationships within a regional economy. In this paper, estimation of sectoral employment by embedding a priori information into a host econometric model is discussed. In the first section, an input-output model is presented that allows for detailed and extensive data on inter-sectoral structure of the Illawarra economy. In the second section it is shown that use of a holistic embedded methodology in estimating dynamic and intensive labour changes in such a model relaxes some of the restrictive assumptions of the traditional input-output model and provides higher accuracy.


SUMMARY The role of trace elements in dengue virulence is not yet known. The present study assessed the serum levels of two micronutrients, copper and iron, in cases of dengue fever. The study involved 96 patients of whom 48 had either severe or non-severe forms of dengue (with and without warning signs), and the remaining 48 were patients with other febrile illnesses (OFI), used as controls. Serum levels of copper and iron were evaluated at admission and by the time of defervescence using commercially available kits. At admission, no difference in the level of serum copper was observed between cases and controls. In the group of dengue cases, the copper level was found to be significantly decreased in severe and non-severe cases with warning signs, compared to non-severe cases without warning signs. In contrast, by the time of defervescence the copper level was found to be increased in all dengue cases compared to OFI controls, but no difference was observed among dengue cases. Unlike OFI controls, dengue cases showed an increasing pattern of copper levels from admission until defervescence. On the other hand, no such significant differences were observed in the serum level of iron in the clinical groups, except for a decreased iron level found in severe cases, compared to non-severe dengue without warning signs. The results show that copper is associated with dengue severity and this finding emphasizes the need to investigate the involvement of trace elements in disease severity so as to improve the prognosis of dengue.


The development in photogrammetry has created possibilities for new methods in aerial images acquisition. Remotely-controlled imaging from an unmanned helium zeppelin is a new and relatively unexplored acquisition. The purpose with this degree project is to evaluate the accuracy of this kind of low-height photographing system, a task given from the consultant company WSP, in Sweden. Landbadet in Uddevalla municipality was chosen as a test field for the zeppelin. Seventeen images distributed over three strips were acquired from the flying height of 80 m. The ground control points for the purpose of block adjustment and control points for the purpose of accuracy evaluation were measured with Network RTK. Block adjustment were performed in the software Photomodeler Scanner. Afterwards the control points could be measured photogrammetrically and compared with the reference measurement. The evaluation of the photogrammetric point accuracy was based on the differences between the photogrammetric and the GPS-measured coordinates of the control points in plane and height. The RMS-value of the differences was 0,040 m in plane and 0,056 m in height for the whole block. The difference in the point accuracy was partially affected by the base-height ratio and by the number of images used to determine the point`s coordinates. The conclusion in general is that the system has the possibility to be used for rationalizing the mapping work compared to measurements done with conventional aerial images acquisition methods. However a satisfactorily result is dependent on a well working video link, good base-height ratio and calm wind conditions.


Currently approved neuraminidase inhibitors (NAI) for the treatment of influenza A virus infections are prone to induce viral drug resistance development due to the rapid evolutionary dynamics of the neuraminidase (NA) and hemagglutinin (HA) proteins. Both HA and NA proteins are subject to antigenic drift and the epistatic interactions within and between these proteins can lead to genetic diversity that enables the virus to easily develop resistant mutations under selective pressure in a host. To study NAI resistance and clinical outcome, the global observational Influenza Resistance Information Study (IRIS; NCT00884117) was conducted. Patients that were clinically diagnosed with influenza were enrolled in the study. Nasal and throat swabs taken at baseline and on days 3, 6, and 10 were assessed by semi-quantitative real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) to determine the influenza virus type and subtype. NAI resistance was initially determined by mutation specific RT-PCR, Sanger sequencing and phenotypic susceptibility analysis. Genetic resistance mutations to oseltamivir were detected in 61 patients (43 H1N1pdm [H275Y] and 18 H3N2 [R292K]) by mutation specific PCR. Subsequently, samples of 43 patients were subjected to deep sequencing analysis to characterize both the betweenand the within-host diversity and the evolutionary process of the HA and NA proteins of infected patients. The NAI resistance mutations (H275Y and R292K) in the NA protein of the H1N1pdm and H3N2 viruses were either detected in day 3 samples or at later time point. Additionally, viruses in several individuals had mutations that were located across the whole HA and NA proteins. Some low frequency mutations such as D114N, S200P, and D239N, that were located in the antigenic sites or near the receptor binding site of the HA protein, became fixed in the later time point viral samples. Also, some mutations in HA may have occurred in concert with the resistance mutations in NA. Further genetic analyses and phylogeny should provide further insights in the emergence of mutations in individual hosts and the larger population.


Ultra wideband (UWB) radio offers low power consumption, low spectral density, high immunity against interferences and other benefits, but for synchronous transmission of data the transmitter and the receiver clocks have to be synchronized. One possibility to realize this is the use of a broadband mixer which is difficult to fabricate and hence expensive. An alternative is the use of a sampling phase detector which is not only cheaper, but also yields a simpler circuitry. In this paper the two methods are compared and the advantages of synchronization with a sampling phase detector are shown.


Cowpeas (Vigna unguiculata L. Walp) are widely distributed throughout the world, being a relatively cheap source of protein and energy, but underutilized in most countries. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that about 1.62 billion people are affected by anemia and that preschool children are the most affected, with a prevalence of 47.4%. Several countries have stepped up efforts to reduce iron deficiency anemia by supple‐ menting iron, as well as universal fortification of foods with iron and other micronutri‐ ents and vitamins. Parallel to these programs, several intervention studies were carried out with the same objective, using various forms of food fortification/enrichment aimed at the control of anemia. Fortification/food enrichment has contributed to the reduction of the prevalence of anemia. The biofortification of foods, such as cowpea, produced in countries of Africa and Latin America, including Brazil, where the prevalence of anemia is high, deserves attention because can be used in the usual form of ingestion and also in the form of flour in the preparation of products for children, with greater acceptance by them, constituting a new and promising strategy to reduce the levels of iron deficiency anemia.


Differences exist in land use/cover pattern and its change between the P. R. China and the USA. In order to describe those differences, land use changes in representative regions were quantitatively analyzed and compared. Xiamen City, Changzhutan region and Liupan Mountains regions were selected to represent three different hydrogeomorphic areas of eastern, central, and western China, respectively, while the Goodwin Creek Experimental Watershed (GCEW) located in the north-central part of Mississippi in the bluff hills just east of the Mississippi River floodplain was chosen in the USA. By integrating historical Landsat TM imagery and geographical information system data, the spatiotemporal land use dynamics and conversion of land use in China and the USA between 1980 and 2010 were explored and compared. Results indicated an urban sprawl in eastern and central China, which encroached upon large amount of cropland, forest land and grassland. On the other hand, western China reclaimed cropland from grassland, forest land, which led to severe soil erosion between 1990 and 2000. Goodwin Creek Watershed of the USA converted 73.3% of the lost cropland into forest land, pasture and idle land, which accounted for about 90% in 2010. Further, counter-urbanization occurs in the GCEW due to favorable eco-environment for living. Compared with the land dynamic degree of the GCEW, eastern China is greater than it; western China is smaller than it while central China is almost equal to it. And the land use intensity index of GCEW is smaller than that of China all these years. Eastern China advocated ecological civilization in 2007 to meet the serious challenges of sustainable development. Western China started the Return of Land from Farming to Forestry and Grassland Project in 2000. The Changzhutan region in central China is served as the resource-saving and environment-friendly community in 2007, which will be favorable for the sustainable land utilization and protection of ecology. From the eco-environmental view, China might use the experience of USA for future reference.


The purpose of this paper is deal with possible ways of illegal profit shifting abroad, in particular through export trade of agricultural products. In order to test the hypothesis on asymmetry between indicators of exports/imports between Ukraine and its trading partners, there was carried out a comparative analysis by means of the mirror statistics method. The comparison of indicators of products exports/imports by the method of mirror statistics confirmed the hypothesis regarding the asymmetry of these indicators in international trade. There have been analyzed the world experience in combating tax evasion and profit shifting abroad as well as the steps taken by Ukraine in this area, in particular the introduction of transfer pricing as a barrier to the hidden capital outflow from the country. The authors' main contributions are discovered asymmetry of mirror data such as price, trade value and weight of Ukrainian grain. As a result, the mirror prices of imports of the partner country are significantly higher than the export prices of Ukrainian grain (IAp – 1,20-1,67), whereas for the USA, France, Germany revealed a lack of significant difference between mirror prices for some largest trading partners (IAp – 1,02-1,15). This is a confirmation of shifting profits from Ukraine in order to place them in more reliable jurisdictions and evidence base for the introduction of more stringent measures such as transfer pricing.


Olavo de Carvalho is one of the most important names of current Brazilian philosophy. For almost 30 years he has written essays on classical philosophy, political science, and traditional symbolism. Recently, he has emerged in the political scene as a sort of "anomaly," having no formal associations with academia, but with a strong influence on the current Brazilian presidency. Since the vast majority of his published works are in Portuguese, the international academic audience is still wanting of a proper introduction to his writings. This essay seeks to answer this need, analyzing three aspects of Carvalho's thought: his philosophical principles and methodology, his macro-vision of history and political philosophy, and his analysis of contemporary geopolitics. At the end, we conclude that Olavo de Carvalho is a remarkable philosopher, originally mixing classic influences with a spiritual vision of politics, even if some of his conclusions might be seen as "unorthodox."


A variety of food is produced and passes the whole chain by processing, transport and trade and finally it ends up with the consumer. But in many cases, the food is disposed before it is eaten. Some of the produced food does not even pass the whole entire chain before it turns to waste. The question about food waste in debates is a case of access to food for every human beeing. It is question of consumption of the resources, waste management and an issue of environmental impact. Measurable statistics can be found in the later stages of the chain, but the basis for the quantities that may be one of the primary production is not as clear. My object of this thesis has been to acquire knowledge about where the milk ends up at the farm. How much is direct food for humans, how much are destined for processing, how much goes back into production - to the calves, and how large proportion becomes waste that is converted into manure. I also wanted to know the causes of why the milk ends up where it actually does. After visiting 17 dairy farms in Bohuslan, Dalsland and Vastra Gotaland, and through discussions with involved farmers I have found that the milk that turns into manure are collectively less than 1% of the produced milk. The main reason why the milk in the daily production goes into manure heap from the farmers I have visited, is because of the cows that are sick with mastitis or lameness, and their following penicillin therapy makes the milk become contaminated. 3% of the produced milk is essential for the future, when it goes directly to the calves. The entire 97% is produced and reaches the goal with the dairy farmer's entire business - it goes further as a potential food for humans.


Estimates of genetic correlation between direct and maternal effects for weaning weight of beef cattle are often negative in field data. The biological existence of this genetic antagonism has been the point at issue. Some researchers perceived such negative estimate to be an artifact from poor modeling. Recent studies on sources affecting the genetic correlation estimates are reviewed in this article. They focus on heterogeneity of the correlation by sex, selection bias caused from selective reporting, selection bias caused from splitting data by sex, sire by year interaction variance, and sire misidentification and inbreeding depression as factors contributing sire by year interaction variance. A biological justification of the genetic antagonism is also discussed. It is proposed to include the direct-maternal genetic covariance in the analytical models. (Asian-Aust. J. Anim. Sci. 2001. Vol 15, No. 8 : 1222-1226)


In this paper, we report a micromagnetic modeling study on the recording processes in heat-assisted magnetic recording. By solving coupled Landau-Lifshitz-Bloch equations, recording simulations are performed for granular FePt-L10 thin film media. The calculated signal-to-noise ratio shows strong dependence on recording field amplitude, especially for media of small size grains. It is found that low field amplitude yields unsaturated recording whereas high field amplitude causes transitions to be broadened immediately after writing. High thermal gradient will alleviate the transition broadening, allowing high field amplitude to be employed so that completed magnetization in the recorded bits can be achieved in small grin size media. The study concludes that the ability in obtaining the expected signal-to-noise ratio performance at very small grain pitches would critically rely on whether sufficiently high thermal gradient can be achieved in the media.


Cilia are of particular importance to the planktonic veliger larva, fulfilling feeding, locomotory and sensory roles. This study concentrates on the ciliation of the larval mantle and velum. The mantle is an important adult organ yet one scarcely studied in the larval form. The larval velum is the characteristic swimming and feeding organ of the veliger larval form. Knowledge of the ciliary arrangement of larval bivalves, especially in relation to different life history strategies, provides important information for arguments over the phylogeny of such characteristics within the Mollusca. Anatomical work explored the possibility of ciliary sense organs being found on the mantle and further elucidates the pattern of distribution of cilia on the velum. Larval ciliary swimming in varying water temperatures has been investigated via the development of a filming methodology, revealing the thermal tolerance of swimming using velar ciliation and the ability of the larva to detect and respond to temperature stimuli.

Cilia were investigated throughout larval development from veliger stage to metamorphosis in two bivalve families, the Ostreidae (Crassostrea gigas and Ostrea edulis) and the Teredinidae (Lyrodus pedicellatus). The three larvae represented three developmental modes with C. gigas planktonic, O. edulis partly brooded and L. pedicellatus long-term brooded. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and light microscopy was used for anatomical investigations. Confocal laser scanning microscopy was used to locate catecholamines and serotonin in C. gigas larvae, with reference to the cilia locations identified by SEM. Swimming larvae were filmed in fixed and changing temperatures to identify behavioural or physiological reactions.

The mantle of the ostreid larvae had 13 different cilia groups which have been identified and photographed in C. gigas and O. edulis. Two of these groups appear to be sensory. One group is associated with the developing gill bud, and the other is located directly under the posterodorsal shell notch. The location of this group under the shell notch also was the location for several cells containing catecholamines. The ventral inner mantle rim of ostreid larvae has large tracts of cilia, probably primitive larval versions of adult rejection tracts. There were several flask-shaped cells with catecholamines and two long serotonin containing fibres in the mantle where these tracts were found. The mantle of L. pedicellatus had 2 distinct groups of cilia. One of these groups formed discrete clumps on the inner mantle fold and featured sensory structures. The velar ciliation of both the ostreid species larvae was almost identical, and both revealed a previously unreported band of cilia. This band may increase the efficiency of the opposed band particle capture system. The velum of L. pedicellatus was different from the ostreid larvae; its velar ciliature was similar to other long-term brooded larvae recorded in the literature with a large adoral tract and the loss of the post-oral band.

Larval swimming velocity increased with increasing water temperature. Acclimated larvae were able to swim in water temperatures where larval activity stopped during sudden temperature changes. Changes in larval swimming during sudden temperature changes are probably due to an interaction of three factors: water viscosity changes affecting cilia efficiency, the physiological effect of temperature and behavioural responses.

The additional ciliary band on the ostreid velum probably increases particle capture efficiency, and further investigations are needed to determine if this is a characteristic unique to the ostreids. The velar ciliation of the brooded L. pedicellatus is, by the pediveliger stage, similarly modified to the velum of other brooded larvae from widely separated taxonomic groups. Mantle ciliation is more extensive in ostreids than in teredinids, but both have sensory stereocilia on the mantle. The presence of catecholamines and serotonin suggests that the larva has a measure of control both of mantle and velar ciliary beat, seen in the variation in swimming patterns and particle rejection.

The filming and analytical techniques developed offer an accessible method for gathering laboratory data on larval behaviours. Analysis of swimming suggested larvae can sense changes in temperature and effect a behavioural response to it. Such responses may enable larvae to control their vertical position in the water column when encountering environmental discontinuities or heterogeneities such as thermoclines. Variation in larval swimming velocity between larval batches suggests this method could also be used as a quick assay to determine the fitness of different larval batches within a hatchery.


ABSTRACT Vibrio vulnificus causes both food-borne disease and wound infections. Most V. vulnificus strains express capsular polysaccharide (CPS), which is required for the virulence of this organism. Under standard growth conditions, CPS expression is lost at a relatively high frequency (10−3 to 10−4), resulting in a switch from an opaque (Op, CPS+) colony morphology to a translucent (Tr, CPS−) colony morphology. The wzb gene, which encodes a phosphatase required for CPS expression, has been proposed to be involved in this switch through a site-specific deletion of the entire gene. In an examination of five strains, we found that the frequency of wzb deletion in Tr colonies varies by strain and therefore does not account for all the Tr colonies that are seen. In addition, we have identified a third, intermediate (Int) colony morphotype, in which the colonies appear less opaque but are not fully translucent. PCR studies have demonstrated that Int colonies still contain the wzb gene, while reverse transcriptase PCR studies have shown that although Int strains retain expression of wzb, in some cases the transcription of wzb is reduced. Int strains switch to a true Tr (wzb negative) morphotype at a very high frequency (nearly 100%) under certain conditions. Finally, Int colonies, which in some cases can easily be mistaken for Tr colonies, have been observed to occasionally revert to Op, while Tr colonies containing a wzb deletion presumably are unable to revert to the encapsulated form.


In this paper, the notion of 'doing boy' through performance is explored. The point is made that singing is a potential gender performance but the treble voice of the 8‐year‐old to 14‐year‐old boy is a biologically determined as well as socially constructed feature of young masculinity. A complication is the degree to which the boy's treble voice is traditionally associated with sacred music. Recent attempts at widening participation in singing by cathedrals are evaluated for their potential to increase male participation in the arts through more eclectic forms of repertoire and the sharing of musical expertise. The under‐representation of males is seen as a problem in the study and boys' choices not to sing during the 8–14 years because of uncertainty about the gendering of the high voice is presented as the major issue. Different sexualities can attach to vocal performance by young males, and these are explored. The changed voice of the 'boy band' is associated with explicit performances of heterosexuality in the tradition of hegemonic masculinity. The unchanged treble voice, through its strong association with sacred music, can represent innocence, but such innocence may be related to other forms of masculinity than the hegemonic type. This makes for continued ambivalence over whether boys' singing is a 'hard' or 'soft' form of masculinity.


Background: It is mandatory in many countries for decisions for all new patients with cancer to be made within multi-disciplinary teams (MDTs). Whether patients with disease recurrence should also routinely be discussed by the MDT is unknown. Aim: This study investigated the role of an upper gastro intestinal (UGI) MDT in decision-making for patients with disease recurrence. Design: A retrospective review of prospectively kept MDT records (2010 to 2011) was performed identifying patients discussed with recurrence of oesophagogastric cancer. Information was recorded about: i) why an MDT referral was made, ii) who made the referral and iii) the final MDT recommendation. Implementation of the MDT recommendation was also examined. Participants: All patients discussed with recurrence of cancer at a central UGI cancer MDT were included. Results: During the study 54 MDT meetings included discussions regarding 304 new patients and 29 with disease recurrence. Referrals to the MDT for patients with recurrence came from outpatient clinics (n=19, 65.5%) or following emergency admission (n=10). Most referrals were made by the surgical team (n=25, 86.2%). MDT recommendations were best supportive care (n=11, 37.9%), palliative chemotherapy (n=9, 31.0%), stent (n=5, 17.2%), palliative radiotherapy (n=3, 10.3%) and further surgery (n=1, 3.4%), with 25 (86.2%) of these implemented. Conclusion: UGI MDTs focus on new referrals and only a small proportion of patients with recurrent disease are re-discussed. Many patients go on to receive further treatments. Whether such patients are optimally managed within the standard MDT is uncertain, however, and warrants further consideration.


Blanket advice on optimal fertilizer application rates has failed to achieve potential yield gains for crop production in much of Sub-Saharan Africa. However, digital technology now makes it possible to deliver personalized extension services to farmers at a much lower cost. In this paper, we present results from a randomized control trial designed to evaluate the effectiveness of a mobile app that provides personalized advice on rice nutrient management. The experiment induced variation in both access to the app and access to an input grant for fertilizer. We find that households with access to the app have 15 percent higher yields and 20 percent higher profits. We show that, on average, personalized advice increases yields without increasing the overall quantity of fertilizer used. Rather, some households increase their use of fertilizer while other households decrease their use of the input. We conclude that the scaling of personalized extension services could improve productivity and livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa without necessarily increasing the total amount of fertilizer in use. JEL codes: C93, D24, O33, Q16


In this paper, we first examine the relationship between the relative particle motions of fluids and solids and the seismic signal received when compressional waves propagate through saturated porous materials. We use a rotated-staggered-grid finite difference modeling scheme to simulate elastic wave phenomena in a digitized 2D structural model obtained from micrographs of a loose beach sand. When considering ultrasonic wave propagation wave in models with explicit inclusion of granular structure, the heterogeneities of quartz and pores in size and shape lead to frequency-dependent seismic phenomena. By comparing the numerical results from models where three sources with different frequencies were used, we saw that (1) strong particle motions concentrate mostly in fluid; (2) significant variations in pressure are observed in the fluid; (3) during the dynamic process of wave propagation, relative particle motion of the fluid and solid phases induces stress concentration on the sharp tips and corner of grains; (4) coherent particle motion is generated by sources with low frequency content, while sources with higher frequencies induce disordered particle motions. Corresponding to these particle motions, less scattered energy is observed in cases with more coherent particle motion, and strong scattering is generated by disordered particle motion. Then we extend our work to a 3D digitized Fontainebleau sandstone sample. Though the size of the sample is small, we still consider a relative broad source frequency band (100 kHz – 20 MHz) so as to study the frequency dependent behavior of this sample. We notice a velocity minimum occurring at some "critical frequency" (750 kHz). Above this "critical frequency", the velocity increases with frequency; while below this frequency, velocity goes to a low frequency value – effective medium value. The transition from low frequency to high frequency behavior can be viewed as going from wave-like to ray-like propagation. We then study the fluid effect by saturating the pores with non-viscous and viscous brine and oil. The velocities for samples saturated with fluids are generally larger than those of dry sample at frequencies below the critical one, which shows the significant effect of the compressibility of fluids. While the velocities become smaller than those of dry sample at frequencies above the critical one, which shows that the density of fluids comes into play a significant role. We see little effect of viscosity of fluids on velocity. To investigate the scale effect, we first compare the result from dynamic modeling for case with source frequency of 100 kHz to that from static modeling by using finite element method on a sub-cube selected from the original sample. Then we elongate the 3D sample in one direction by repeating the original sample five times, and compare the result from this elongated one to that from the original one at source frequency of 100 kHz. Velocities for these three cases are close to each other. Smaller velocity from static modeling might be due to the higher porosity of the selected sub-cube sample.


Abstract The phylogenetic position of a species of the free-living protist genus Colpodella is assessed using its SSU rDNA gene sequence in the context of a wide array of other alveolate taxa. Phylogenetic analyses indicates that this species is not related to species of Bodo as has previously been suggested. However, SSU rDNA data alone are insufficient to provide a wholly stable hypothesis of relationships for Colpodella sp. among the various alveolate phyla. Much of this instability can be attributed to alignment procedure sensitivity. Analyses of SSU rDNA and actin gene sequences in combination provide strong support for a species of Colpodella as sister group to the ciliates, irrespective of alignment procedure. Moreover, use of SSU rDNA data alone strongly support a recent common ancestry of the genera Perkinsus and Parvilucifera with the dinoflagellates, and not with the apicomplexans. These findings, and the nearly identical ultrastructural characteristics of Colpodella, Perkinsus, and Parvilucifera species, suggest that this morphology is the ancestral condition for all of Alveolata.


: Newman's test consist in draw a line on two parts of a figure made of points. This test was achieved in four successive trials by thirteen boys and fourteen girls, all voluntary students. In two trials subjects wear Reiser screen which reduce to a slight extent distinctness of vision. Trial order was randomised. For each trial, time performance and four numeral criterions of graphic defects were compared to initial values. The test retest values are no significantly different. Reiser screen alter some criterions. So the Newman test is useful to assess awakening on condition that such criterion were used in reference to subject preanaesthetic values and with controlled conditions of environment.


The political instability in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia, various conflicts are the main drivers of such an unprecedented global displacement of people. The massive movements of populations in the Mediterranean area call for a rapid and deep knowledge of the phenomenon. An emerging strategy considers the analysis of publicly available twitter data providing high resolution positioning when users opt to geotag their tweets with their current location. Using the VOICES-INT platform, we track migratory trajectories of people who is currently involved in the migration across the Mediterranean central route and the possible relocation of displaced people who spent a period in the UN refugee camps.


: Spontaneous and nitrosoguanidine (NG)-induced rate of reversions to glutamine independence was studied in cultured temperature-sensitive glutamine auxotrophs of Chinese hamster cells. In 3 experiments the spontaneous rate of reversions varied from 0.8-10(-6) to 3.84-10(-6) per cell per generation. A dependence of the yield of NG-induced back mutations upon the time interval between the mutagenic treatment and the transfer to selective conditions (glutamine deficient medium, 40 degrees C) was established. No induced revertants were detected when cells were transferred to selective conditions immediately after the treatment with NG. After 2--3 days cultivation in glutamine containing medium at 36 degrees C and the sunsequent transfer to selective conditions the frequency of induced reversions varied from 0.56-10(-4) to 10.55-10(-4) in different experiments; after 6 days -- from 0.05-10(-4) to 4.0-10(-4). In all cases where induction was detected, the difference, between the frequency of glutamine prototrophs in treated and control plates was significant. Glutamine independence proved to be stable after prolonged cultivation under non-selective conditions, the degree of prototrophy being greatly unequal in different clones. No differnce in this respect was detected between spontaneous and NG-induced revertants. The proposed system of reverse mutations can be used for studying diverse problems of somatic cell genetics.


We consider opacity questions where an observation function provides to an external attacker a view of the states along executions and secret executions are those visiting some state from a fixed subset. Disclosure occurs when the observer can deduce from a finite observation that the execution is secret, the e-disclosure variant corresponding to the execution being secret with probability greater than 1 − e. In a probabilistic and non deterministic setting, where an internal agent can choose between actions, there are two points of view, depending on the status of this agent: the successive choices can either help the attacker trying to disclose the secret, if the system has been corrupted, or they can prevent disclosure as much as possible if these choices are part of the system design. In the former situation, corresponding to a worst case, the disclosure value is the supremum over the strategies of the probability to disclose the secret (maximisation), whereas in the latter case, the disclosure is the infimum (minimisation). We address quantitative problems (comparing the optimal value with a threshold) and qualitative ones (when the threshold is zero or one) related to both forms of disclosure for a fixed or finite horizon. For all problems, we characterise their decidability status and their complexity. We discover a surprising asymmetry: on the one hand optimal strategies may be chosen among deterministic ones in maximisation problems, while it is not the case for minimisation. On the other hand, for the questions addressed here, more minimisation problems than maximisation ones are decidable.


Objective: Words shape our perceptions of behavior, and we applied this maxim to evaluating how different verbs can alter the perception of corporal acts used to discipline children. Specifically, we compared spank, swat, slap, hit, and beat. We hypothesized that (a) parents and nonparents would rate these terms differently, (b) corporal terms would be differentiated in a consistent manner across 3 behavior rating scales (common, acceptable, effective), and (c) acceptable and effective ratings would align more closely to each other than either would to common ratings. Method: In an online survey, participants read 8 vignettes with words used to label parental reactions to child misbehaviors and rated each vignette on how common, acceptable, and effective the response was. Results: Parents rated corporal actions as more common than did nonparents, but the samples were comparable on acceptable and effective ratings. Rank order of corporal term ratings was consistent across rating scales, with spank rated as the most common, acceptable, and effective response, followed (in order) by swat, hit, slap, and beat. Finally, evaluations of corporal terms on the acceptability and effectiveness of parental responses were more closely aligned with each other than either was to evaluations of how common the responses are. Conclusion: The specific verbs used to describe acts of physical discipline can alter interpretations of the associated behavior, and potentially serve to normalize, conceal, or justify violent actions.


This thesis describes the results of computer simulations of cosmic ray extensive air showers with primary energy in the range 10 (^14) – 10 (^19) eV. A brief review of simulations made by other authors is presented after which models for high energy nuclear interactions are discussed. The parameters chosen for the preferred model employed here are stated and some more recent data from accelerator experiments are mentioned. The predictions from the preferred model for proton initiated air showers are compared with experimental data and the results of previous simulations; the consequences of including trends seen from recent accelerator experiments in the model for interactions are also discussed. The break-up of energetic particles with atomic mass number as high as 56 as they traverse the atmosphere is discussed and a model to reconstruct this process at cosmic ray energies is described. The predictions from the preferred model for interactions assuming iron primary particles are given. It is concluded that a study of the average shower characteristics will not lead to a reliable determination of the mass composition of the primary radiation. Predictions for the fluctuations of measurable parameters in air showers are presented; it is shown that on the basis of these studies it is likely that comment may be made upon the primary composition. The results of these simulations are particularly relevant to the Haverah Park Extensive Air Shower Array; the improvements to the array presently being implemented should, according to the present results, enable an estimation of the primary composition IV at energies > 10 (^17) eV to be made. In particular the presence or otherwise of protons in the primary beam should be estimated. The feasibility of the cluster analysis of experimental data is investigated and it is shown on the basis of the clustering of simulation data that to a limited extent the separation of air showers into groups according to the atomic mass number of the primary particle is possible.


The overarching goal of this project was to identify and evaluate cognitive and behavioral indices that are sensitive to sleep deprivation and may help identify commercial motor vehicle (CMV) drivers who are at-risk for driving in a sleep deprived state and may prove useful in field tests administered by officers. To that end, the authors evaluated indices of driver physiognomy (e.g., yawning, droopy eyelids, etc.) and driver behavioral/cognitive state (e.g., distracted driving) and the sensitivity of these indices to objective measures of sleep deprivation. The measures of sleep deprivation were sampled on repeated occasions over a period of 3.5-months in each of 44 drivers diagnosed with Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) and 22 controls (matched for gender, age within 5 years, education within 2 years, and county of residence for rural vs. urban driving). Comprehensive analyses showed that specific dimensions of driver physiognomy associated with sleepiness in previous research and face-valid composite scores of sleepiness did not: 1) distinguish participants with OSA from matched controls; 2) distinguish participants before and after PAP treatment including those who were compliant with their treatment; 3) predict levels of sleep deprivation acquired objectively from actigraphy watches, not even among those chronically sleep deprived. Those findings are consistent with large individual differences in driver physiognomy. In other words, when individuals were sleep deprived as confirmed by actigraphy watch output they did not show consistently reliable behavioral markers of being sleep deprived. This finding held whether each driver was compared to him/herself with adequate and inadequate sleep, and even among chronically sleep deprived drivers. The scientific evidence from this research study does not support the use of driver physiognomy as a valid measure of sleep deprivation or as a basis to judge whether a CMV driver is too fatigued to drive, as on the current Fatigued Driving Evaluation Checklist. Fair and accurate determinations of CMV driver sleepiness in the field will likely require further research on alternative strategies that make use of a combination of information sources besides driver physiognomy, including work logs, actigraphy, in vehicle data recordings, GPS data on vehicle use, and performance tests


Pursuing a bottom-up approach to explore which flavor symmetry could serve as an explanation of the observed fermion masses and mixings, we discuss an extension of the standard model (SM) where the flavor structure for both quarks and leptons is determined by a spontaneously broken S4 and the requirement that its particle content is embeddable simultaneously into the conventional SO(10) grand unified theory (GUT) and a continuous flavor symmetry Gf like SO(3)f or SU(3)f . We explicitly provide the Yukawa and the Higgs sector of the model and show its viability in two numerical examples which arise as small deviations from rank one matrices. In the first case, the corresponding mass matrix is democratic and in the second one only its 2-3 block is non-vanishing. We demonstrate that the Higgs potential allows for the appropriate vacuum expectation value (VEV) configurations in both cases, if CP is conserved. For the first case, the chosen Yukawa couplings can be made natural by invoking an auxiliary Z2 symmetry. The numerical study we perform shows that the best-fit values for the lepton mixing angles θ12 and θ23 can be accommodated for normal neutrino mass hierarchy. The results for the quark mixing angles turn out to be too small. Furthermore the CP-violating phase δ can only be reproduced correctly in one of the examples. The small mixing angle values are likely to be brought into the experimentally allowed ranges by including radiative corrections. Interestingly, due to the S4 symmetry the mass matrix of the right-handed neutrinos is proportional to the unit matrix. E-mail: email@example.com E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com E-mail: email@example.com


The aim of this Regional Research Communication was to validate a panel of 30 microsatellite markers recommended by FAO/ISAG for studies of biodiversity in cattle to improve the characterisation of Cuban buffalo populations. The water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) is an economically important livestock species. Therefore, research focused on the study of the genetic relationships among water buffalo populations is useful to support conservation decisions and to design breeding schemes. Twenty-eight of the 30 tested regions were amplified, one of which (ETH10) turned out to be monomorphic. A total of 143 alleles were observed in the Cuban water buffalo population. The average number of alleles per locus was 5·04. The number of alleles per polymorphic locus ranged from two (INRA 63 and MM12) to nine (ETH185). The observed and expected heterozygosity ranged from 0·108 (HAUT24) to 0·851 (CSSM66) and 0·104 (MM12) to 0·829(INRA32), respectively. The polymorphic information content (PIC) ranged from 0·097 (MM12) to 0·806 (INRA32), and the overall value for these markers was 0·482. Within the population, inbreeding estimates (F IS) was positive in 14 of the 30 loci analysed. This study thus highlights the usefulness of heterologous bovine microsatellite markers to assess the genetic variability in Cuban water buffalo breeds. Furthermore, the results can be utilised for future breeding strategies and conservation.


DOI: 10.7764/RDLC.18.1.16 This manuscript presents a comparative research about the perception of safety needs in the design and use of formworks. Needs were evaluated compiling opinions from different stakeholders in the construction sector in Spain and United Kingdom. Research methodology involved different phases: definition of the territorial and population context, research tool design, data collection and data analysis and findings. Thus, an ad-hoc questionnaire was designed and distributed to project designers, construction companies and manufacturing formwork companies, in order to identify needs in the design phase, construction phase and legal issues. The findings in both countries showed a high agreement in items related with productivity and final cost during the design phase of the formwork/falsework. Suppliers and customers showed different perception about the training services, especially in Spain. This study has allowed the identification of the sector's needs through the opinion of the main participants in the formwork trade. This should be a good basis for the development of measures that improve health and safety levels in formwork activities.


With the modern tendency to simplify therapeutic and diagnostic measures it seems strange indeed that the old method of gastric lavage should be so persistently employed; and this, in spite of the fact that the Leube-Rosenthal method has been so long known to the profession. Surely no one who has employed both methods can consistently maintain that the funnel method is either simpler, cleaner or more efficacious. In fact, no method may be considered simple which requires the amount of physical exertion necessary in the process of raising and lowering the funnel; no method clean which permits of the possibility of soiling the patient and things about him, and surely no method can be more efficacious than one which permits of the regulation of the in-flow and the out-flow of water, as does the Leube-Rosenthal method. Yet Herschell, though he considers the apparatus very admirable in the hands of a


The European Union's (EU) claims to be a leader in international climate policy are well known. Since the early 1990s, a rich and vibrant academic literature has analyzed the internal sources and international consequences of its leadership aspirations, especially in relation to the challenges of mitigation. More recently, attention has turned to adaptation policy. The literature highlights how policy actors have successfully exploited many of the opportunities afforded by the EU's 'polycentric' form, while minimizing its downsides, but that acute challenges lie ahead, particularly if a strong global‐level framework remains elusive. It has continually underlined the fact that the EU's climate policy activities have enormous relevance well beyond European borders. Both in terms of its role as a driver of international policy and a source of transferable policy lessons on how to govern in 'polycentric' settings, appreciating the EU's experience is vital for those seeking to understand the governance of climate change, both within and between states. WIREs Clim Change 2013, 4:75–90. doi: 10.1002/wcc.205


The effect of cover-crop management on growth and yield of 'Bravo' cabbage ( Brassica oleracea var. Capitata L.), 'Market Pride' tomato ( Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.), and 'Mustang' snap bean ( Phaseolus vulgaris L.) was determined. Each fall, 'Wheeler' winter rye ( Secale cereale L.) and 'Oregon Crown' hairy vetch ( Vicia villosa Roth) were interseeded. The following spring, the cover crops were killed by either applying glyphosate and mowing (CC-G) or mowing and disking (CC-D). Trifluralin was preplant incorporated into bare ground as a conventional tillage (CT) treatment. In 1992 and 1993, a chicken (Gallus gallus L.) based fertilizer was applied to half the subplots. The greatest snap bean and cabbage yields were in CT. The system with the greatest tomato yields varied. In 1991, the greatest tomato yields were in the CT treatment, while in 1992 yields were greatest in the CT and CC-D treatments, and in 1993 the greatest yields were in CT and CC-G. Cabbage yields were greater in the fertilized than the unfertilized treatments. In 1992, infestations of diamondback moth, imported cabbageworm, and cabbage looper were greater in CT than in the CC-G treatment. Three years of the CC-G treatment increased soil organic matter from 3.07% to 3.48% and increased soil pH from 6.30 to 6.51, while neither changed in the CT. Chemical names used: N-(phosphonomethyl) glycine (glyphosate); 2,6-dinitro- N,N-dipro'pyl-4-(trifluoromethyl) benzenamine (trifluralin).


Primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) and primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) are two chronic cholestatic liver diseases affecting bile ducts that may progress to biliary cirrhosis. In the past few years, the increasing knowledge in the pathogenesis of both diseases led to a growing number of clinical trials and possible new targets for therapy. In this review, we provide an update on the treatments in clinical use and summarize the new drugs in trials for PBC and PSC patients. Farnesoid X Receptor (FXR) agonists and Pan-Peroxisome Proliferator-Activated Receptor (PPAR) agonists are the most promising agents and have shown promising results in both PBC and PSC. Fibroblast Growth Factor 19 (FGF19) analogues also showed good results, especially in PBC, while, although PBC and PSC are autoimmune diseases, immunosuppressive drugs had disappointing effects. Since the gut microbiome could have a potential role in the pathogenesis of PSC, recent research focused on molecules that could change the microbiome, with good results. The near future of the medical management of these diseases may include new treatments or a combination of multiple drugs targeting different signaling pathways at different stages of the diseases.


We report on optically induced nucleation and expansion of stacking faults in hexagonal SiC structures. The activation energy for partial dislocation glide under optical excitation is found to reduce to 0.25 +/- 0.05 eV, which is about 2 eV lower than for pure thermal activation. From the measurements of thermal activation and below-gap excitation spectroscopy of dislocation glide, we conclude that the elementary process controlling expansion of stacking faults is kink pair nucleation aided by the phonon-kick mechanism. We propose that solitons on 30 degrees Si(g) partials with a silicon core act as deep 2.4 eV + Ev trap sites, readily providing electron-hole recombination energy to enhance the motion of dislocations. Our results suggest that this is a general mechanism of structural degradation in hexagonal SiC.


The Tepee Buttes methane seep deposits exist today as topographically defined limestone features in the surrounding Pierre Shale of the Campanian Western Interior Sea~ay. The present sloping surface has previously been assumed to be indicative of original seep structure, and biofacies were interpreted as roughly ringing a central vent core. Contradictory field observations in this study have prompted a more detailed taphonomic approach to the Tepee Buttes limestone, and certain depositional features such as reworked horizontal shell beds were noted and examined in detail for the first time. The results of a taphonomic and . sedimentologic analysis reveal a complex history of reworking that likely involved current action and bioturbation by burrowing seep fauna. We found no clear evidence for deposition along a sloping surface as inclined as today, and buttes are interpreted as having low/uneven original relief. 111