Understanding the relationship between emergent social phenomena and the stabilizing mechanisms that make collective action possible is a long-standing concern in social science, but remains an inadequately theorized area. This article sets out a middle range theory—translational mobilization theory—to address this challenge. Adopting a practice-based approach, we connect interactionist perspectives on social order, analyses of sociotechnical networks, and theories of strategic action fields, to describe and explain how projects of institutionally sanctioned collective action are progressed by actors interacting with and through socially constructed objects. Investigating these mechanisms is a prerequisite to advancing empirical and theoretical understanding of the complex organizational processes and structures that characterize contemporary society.


Objective Electronic health record (EHR) systems contain structured data and unstructured documentation. Clinical insights can be derived from analyzing both but optimal methods for this have not been studied extensively. We compared various approaches to analyzing EHR data for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Materials and Methods We compared analysis of structured and unstructured EHR data using natural language processing (NLP), free-text search, and diagnostic codes against expert adjudication as the reference standard. Results Out of 38,575 patients, we identified 2,281 patients with NAFLD. From the remainder, 10,653 patients with similar data density were selected as a control group. NLP was more sensitive than ICD and text search (NLP 0.93 vs. ICD 0.28 vs. text search 0.81) with higher a F2 score (NLP 0.92 vs. ICD 0.34 vs. text search 0.81). 619 patients had suspected NAFLD documented in radiology notes not acknowledged in other forms of clinical documentation. Of these, 232 (37.5%) were found to have more advanced liver disease after a median of 1,057 days. Discussion NLP-based approaches have superior accuracy in identifying NAFLD within the EHR compared to ICD/text search-based approaches. Suspected NAFLD on imaging is often not acknowledged in subsequent clinical documentation. Many such patients are later found to have more advanced liver disease. Conclusion For identification of NAFLD, NLP performed better than alternative selection modalities and facilitated follow-on analysis of information flow. If accuracy can be proven to persist across clinical domains, NLP can identify patient phenotypes for biomedical research in an accurate and high-throughput manner.


This study was aimed to determine farmers' risk sources and risk management strategies in dairy cattle farms in  Canakkale Province. Data were obtained from 302 farms selected by stratified random sampling method from dairy  farms in Biga and Can districts of Canakkale province in Turkey between May 2017 and September 2017. Descriptive  statistics and factor analysis were used to analyze the data. The results of this study show that the most important risk  source for farmers was lack of credit availability. This risk was followed by inadequacy of artificial insemination and  increase in debt amount. Parasite control was the most important risk management for farmers. This was followed by  off-farm work, off-farm investment and on-farm measures. As a solution to the lack of credit availability, it should be  provided to ease of repayment in credit use and to inceasing opportunities to loan use with low interest rate of farmers.  In terms of parasite control in farms, it is important to the use of regularly parasitic drugs and determining of an effective  parasite control program. As a result, it is expected to contribute to farmers and agricultural policy makers of the findings  of this research.


This paper presents an all-polymer microelectromechanical system technology in which a crosslinker is used to modify the electromechanical properties. The structural material of these microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) structures is a poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)/polystyrene sulfonate/polymethyl methacrylate (PEDOT/PSS/PMMA) blended conductive polymer. Microbridge resonators are fabricated using surface micromachining on glass substrates. The electromechanical properties of the polymer microbridges are studied using electrostatic actuation and optical and electrical detection. The resonance frequency of the polymer bridges occurs in the MHz range, with quality factors of the order of 100 when measured in vacuum. Addition of a silane-based crosslinker increases the Young's modulus of the polymer structural material which is reflected in higher resonance frequency, higher pull-in voltage, better long-term stability of the electrical conductivity, and in a decrease in the quality factor of the resonator. The mechanical properties of the polymer resonators are strongly affected by the residual stress because of the low Young's modulus, and by the measurement frequency and the measurement temperature due to the viscoelastic properties of the polymer structural material


In the field of mobility, conflicts and local opposition may be generated not only by hard implementation of big transport infrastructures, but also by soft measures of traffic regulation. An example is represented by 20 mph Zones, which aim to enhance the intrinsic multifunctionality of urban streets: they try to limit the entity and the speed of car flows in residential areas through re-designing road spaces, so to improve in the meantime the liveableness and the environmental and aesthetic quality of these areas. The speed limitation of 20 mph can however determine protests and disputes by local residents and workers, as it disadvantages private motorized mobility, which represents – at least in most current Italian cities – the main form of mobility. The paper analyzes this kind of conflicts, through the case study of the Mirafiori Nord 20 mph Zone in Turin, which is recognized as a best practice in the Italian context. The analysis of this case, as well as the investigation of the main European and American guidelines on traffic calming techniques and plans, shows that a few critical issues turn out to be crucial in order to prevent and manage these conflicts. First of all, a prompt, well-timed communication plan is essential in order to inform residents and users of the area about the potential costs and benefits of traffic calming measures: even before implementation works begin, people has to know that lower accessibility levels by car will be compensated by an improvement of streets liveableness and environmental quality. From this perspective, residents should be involved in designing the new green and street equipments that may be placed, thanks to the redistribution of significant portions of road space to slow mobility components. Participation of school children is quite recommended, for example in the ideation of vertical signs for the access doors of the zone, in experiencing new pedestrian or cycling home-school journeys, and so on. Parking restrictions are often firmly unaccepted by residents, and should carefully assessed before being proposed. Regular reporting of monitored outcomes of the implemented traffic calming measures (mainly in terms of reduction of maximum speed, of dead or injured persons in road accidents, of pollution and noise local levels etc.) must allow keeping residents conscious of the actual benefits they can enjoy. Last, the implementation of 20 mph Zones must be framed in a more general strategy for urban mobility: push measures (just such as 20 mph Zones) for limiting accessibility levels to private traffic flows have to be counterbalanced by pull measures aimed at potentiating public transport, in order to better balance the modal split; otherwise, congestion on the primary road network could spread consistent traffic flows also inside residential areas, invalidating main benefits of traffic calming measures.


Once users have shared their data online, it is generally difficult for them to revoke access and ask for the data to be deleted. Machine learning (ML) exacerbates this problem because any model trained with said data may have memorized it, putting users at risk of a successful privacy attack exposing their information. Yet, having models unlearn is notoriously difficult. After a data point is removed from a training set, one often resorts to entirely retraining downstream models from scratch. We introduce SISA training, a framework that decreases the number of model parameters affected by an unlearning request and caches intermediate outputs of the training algorithm to limit the number of model updates that need to be computed to have these parameters unlearn. This framework reduces the computational overhead associated with unlearning, even in the worst-case setting where unlearning requests are made uniformly across the training set. In some cases, we may have a prior on the distribution of unlearning requests that will be issued by users. We may take this prior into account to partition and order data accordingly and further decrease overhead from unlearning. Our evaluation spans two datasets from different application domains, with corresponding motivations for unlearning. Under no distributional assumptions, we observe that SISA training improves unlearning for the Purchase dataset by 3.13x, and 1.658x for the SVHN dataset, over retraining from scratch. We also validate how knowledge of the unlearning distribution provides further improvements in retraining time by simulating a scenario where we model unlearning requests that come from users of a commercial product that is available in countries with varying sensitivity to privacy. Our work contributes to practical data governance in machine learning.


Background Lesotho has the second-highest HIV prevalence globally at an estimated 23%, with approximately 87% of the population between 15 and 59 years of age reported to be receiving antiretroviral treatment. There is an urgent need to increase access to effective ART due to increasing rates of first- and second-line treatment failure. Sustaining successful treatment and limiting the development of virological failure is essential, hence the need for early detection of increased viral load indicating drug resistance or rapid progression of viral replication. Aim The aim of the study was to determine the proportion of patients with HIV with virological failure and to identify factors associated with virological failure in two districts of Lesotho. Methods A retrospective cohort study was conducted in two districts (Butha-Buthe and Mokhotlong) in Lesotho. Data for all patients (age ≥15 years) in the viral load (VL) monitoring database with at least two consecutive viral load results between December 2015 and December 2019 from 22 health facilities were extracted. Descriptive data were presented using tables and figures. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were performed. A p-value < 0.05 was considered a statistically significant association. Results Only 4% (n = 913) of the study participants had virological failure. Longer time on treatment >65 months (AOR: 1.85 CI: 1.59–2.15) and being on second-line ART regimen (AOR: 75.23 95% CI: 75.00–99.15) were significantly (p < 0.001) associated with virological failure. Conclusion Virological failure among the study participants is lower compared to other settings. The study identified duration on treatment, treatment regimen as high risk for virological failure. Targeted interventions should be developed for these high-risk group individuals, with continuous monitoring of virological response and appropriate drug switching to clients to achieve improved outcomes.


: Using dynamic light scattering and 31P-NMR spectroscopy methods, the reaction of solubilization of phosphatidylcholine by the ionic detergent, sodium deoxycholate, in aqueous solutions was studied. The kinetics of phosphatidylchodine hydrolysis by phospholipase C from B. cereus depending on the size and structural organization of substrate aggregates was investigated. No phosphatidylcholine hydrolysis was observed in the case of lamellar organization of the substrate, the size of lamellas not exceeding 2000-5000 A. The substrate hydrolysis rate within mixed micelles was controlled by the accessibility of the substrate on the surface of micellar aggregates. There was a decrease in the phosphatidylcholine hydrolysis rate at high detergent concentrations in the system. It was concluded that such a decrease in the hydrolysis rate can be due to two reasons, i) the decrease in mixed micelle size with a simultaneous decrease of surface concentration of the substrate, and, ii) the formation of "pure" detergent micelles capable to adsorb the enzyme by decreasing the "effective" concentration of phospholipase C.


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BACKGROUND
Wholegrain grains and cereals contain a wide range of potentially protective factors that are relevant to gastrointestinal health. The prebiotics best studied are fructans [fructooligosaccharides (FOS), inulin] and galactooligosaccharides (GOS). These and other short-chain carbohydrates can also be poorly absorbed in the small intestine (named fermentable oligo-, di- and monosaccharides and polyols; FODMAPs) and may have important implications for the health of the gut.

METHODS
In the present study, FODMAPs, including fructose in excess of glucose, FOS (nystose, kestose), GOS (raffinose, stachyose) and sugar polyols (sorbitol, mannitol), were quantified using high-performance liquid chromatography with an evaporative light scattering detector. Total fructan was quantified using an enzymic hydrolysis method.

RESULTS
Fifty-five commonly consumed grains, breakfast cereals, breads, pulses and biscuits were analysed. Total fructan were the most common short-chain carbohydrate present in cereal grain products and ranged (g per portion as eaten) from 1.12 g in couscous to 0 g in rice; 0.6 g in dark rye bread to 0.07 g in spelt bread; 0.96 g in wheat-free muesli to 0.11 g in oats; and 0.81 g in muesli fruit bar to 0.05 g in potato chips. Raffinose and stachyose were most common in pulses.

CONCLUSIONS
  Composition tables including FODMAPs and prebiotics (FOS and GOS) that are naturally present in food will greatly assist research aimed at understanding their physiological role in the gut.


The media are a main source of information about mental health for many people and an ever-growing body of literature is evaluating their coverage of the topic. To help keep track of such research, several comprehensive but now dated literature reviews have been published. We assess more recent studies (2007-2017) and suggest future directions by integrating (1) the 'circuit of mass communication' model from media and communication studies which posits that production, content and reception need to be analysed for an in-depth understanding of the media, (2) the holistic view of mental health as comprising both illness and wellbeing and (3) the critical psychiatry literature questioning the assumptions underlying psychiatric knowledge and practice. We find that recent studies have focused on content and 'the illness side' of mental health by examining the representation of particular mental disorders and events involving individuals with specific diagnoses. We identify as a promising development the growing interest in 'the wellbeing side' of mental health whereby authors have started to analyse recovery messages. We invite more production and reception research and more critical content studies which use diagnostic labels cautiously and analyse the representation of people with mental health problems as the victims of violence.


Economics and innovation scholars have long recognized the potential of public pro-curement to trigger innovation. To what extent has this potential been realized so far? What can be done to improve the performance of PPI in this regard? This paper addresses these issues by providing a literature survey of research on public procurement of innovation (PPI). After categorizing PPI instruments, the paper discusses existing interdisciplinary knowledge to answer four broad questions: i) Does PPI spur innovation? ii) How should PPI be designed to best spur innovation? iii) What are the main barriers to implement PPI? iv) What is the role of PPI in the innovation policy mix? The paper concludes with a discussion of future research needs and policy insights in light of current global challenges.


Remember that forced change can provide opportunities for creative endeavors. Take the initiative to contact your colleagues and identify potential collaborative projects. The temporary alliances formed for an educational consortium may develop into other exciting joint ventures.


Background Hyperglycaemia, frequently found at the time of acute myocardial infarction, is associated with excess cardiovascular mortality. The sodium-glucose transporter SGLT1 is present in mammalian myocardium, but its role in acute ischaemia/reperfusion injury is currently unknown. We hypothesise high glucose at reperfusion increases infarct size following injurious ischaemia and this excess injury can be ameliorated by inhibition of SGLT1. Methods and results Langendorff-perfused Sprague-Dawley rat (SDR) heart were subjected to 35 min regional ischaemia and 60min variable glucose (3.5–22 mmol/L) reperfusion, with osmolality controlled by reciprocal dose mannitol. Reperfusion High Glucose (RHG) significantly dose-dependently increased infarct size (45 to 65%, p < 0.05). Phlorizin (3 micromol/L), an SGLT1/2 inhibitor, abrogated the excess injury associated with RHG in Langendorff-perfused SDR heart. Surprisingly however, RHG in isolated primary SDR cardiomyocytes did not result in excess cell death; therefore SDR tissue distribution of SGLT1 was ascertained using rtPCR. Expression was found in kidney, gut, whole heart and aorta, but not skeletal muscle. Isolated cardiomyocytes did not express SGLT1: myocardial expression was limited to non-myocyte cells. Discussion and conclusion We demonstrate for the first time that high glucose at reperfusion exacerbates myocardial injury following lethal myocardial ischaemia that can be ameliorated by inhibition of SGLT, which appears not directly targeted at cardiomyocytes, but rather non-myocyte myocardial cell populations. These data therefore provide the first data for a novel repurposing of SGLT inhibitors in non-diabetic patients presenting with acute coronary syndromes complicated by hyperglycaemia, and provides a tantalising insight into the mechanisms of hyperglycaemic-driven excess cardiovascular mortality.


This study identifies clay mineral assemblages between the eastern Nile delta and northern Israel to complement and refine interpretations of modern sediment provenance and dispersal patterns in the SE Mediterranean. Previous petrological investigations indicate that the River Nile has been the dominant source of sediment transported to the Levant Sea, whereas sediment contributions from Sinai, Gaza and Israeli rivers and coastal cliff exposures in this region have been minor. However, this sediment dispersal pattern, modelled as the Nile littoral cell, is now being altered as a response to the High Dam at Aswan, barrages along the Nile valley and in the Nile delta, and water diversion by the high-density canal system in the Nile delta. As a result, Nile sediment input identified by high proportions of smectite is presently derived from erosion of the delta margin rather than from direct dispersal by the river proper. The present investigation records important percentages of kaolinite in the clay fraction of samples recovered in coastal cliff exposures, from east of Bardawil lagoon and Wadi EI Arish to the Lebanon-Israel border. Clay mineral assemblages in the fluvial channels on the coastal plain east of the Nile delta are considerably more variable: those west of EI Arish are smectite-rich, while those on the plain east and north to the Tel Aviv region are kaolinite-rich; clay assemblages between Tel Aviv and Atlit are smectite-rich; still farther north, locally between Atlit and Haifa, assemblages in some fluvial channels comprise high percentages of illite, and those from north of Haifa to the Lebanese border record large proportions of kaolinite and illite. These laterally variable clay assemblages on the Sinai, Gaza and Israeli coastal margins are more closely related to the different source terrains in highlands that back the coastal plain than to distal Nile provenance. Modern clay minerals near the coast are derived from (1) rivers that flow seasonally from highlands in Sinai and Israel, (2) seasonally variable winds that carry dust from arid and semi-arid regions toward the coast, and (3) wave current erosion of coastal exposures. As the amount of distal Nile-derived clay from Egypt is reduced, these more proximal sources will likely to account for increasing proportions of clays supplied to Sinai and the SE Levant margin.


Noisy labels are ubiquitous in real-world datasets, which poses a challenge for robustly training deep neural networks (DNNs) since DNNs can easily overfit to the noisy labels. Most recent efforts have been devoted to defending noisy labels by discarding noisy samples from the training set or assigning weights to training samples, where the weight associated with a noisy sample is expected to be small. Thereby, these previous efforts result in a waste of samples, especially those assigned with small weights. The input $x$ is always useful regardless of whether its observed label $y$ is clean. To make full use of all samples, we introduce a manifold regularizer, named as Paired Softmax Divergence Regularization (PSDR), to penalize the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence between softmax outputs of similar inputs. In particular, similar inputs can be effectively generated by data augmentation. PSDR can be easily implemented on any type of DNNs to improve the robustness against noisy labels. As empirically demonstrated on benchmark datasets, our PSDR impressively improve state-of-the-art results by a significant margin.


This paper is a commentary on a project application of telemedicine to alleviate primary health care problems in Lundazi district in the Eastern province of Zambia. The project dubbed 'The Virtual Doctor Project' will use hard body vehicles fitted with satellite communication devices and modern medical equipment to deliver primary health care services to some of the neediest areas of the country. The relevance and importance of the project lies in the fact that these areas are hard-to-reach due to rugged natural terrain and have very limited telecommunications infrastructure. The lack of these and other basic services makes it difficult for medical personnel to settle in these areas, which leads to an acute shortage of medical personnel. The paper presents this problem and how it is addressed by 'The Virtual Doctor Project,' emphasizing that while the telemedicine concept is not new in sub-Saharan Africa, the combination of mobility and connectivity to service a number of villages 'on the go' is an important variation in the shift back to the 1978 Alma Ata principles of the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO). This overview of the Virtual Doctor Project in Zambia provides insight into both the potential for ICT, and the problems and limitations that any 'real-world' articulation of this technology must confront.


Bulying that was experienced by someone affected an anxiety and pressure in life. Therefore, asertif training strategy of counselling is required for reducing bullying. Assertive training strategy of counseling is utilized to reduce an anxiety and increases individual interpersonal by removing bullying effect and ward off bullying activities. Asertif training strategy of counseling for reducing bullying consist of rational, identification, differentiating asertif's behaviour and exploringtarget, role playing, simultaneous training, homework and follow-up, and terminations.


Understanding which concepts models can and cannot represent has been fundamental to many tasks: from effective and responsible use of models to detecting out of distribution data. We introduce Gaussian process probes (GPP), a unified and simple framework for probing and measuring uncertainty about concepts represented by models. As a Bayesian extension of linear probing methods, GPP asks what kind of distribution over classifiers (of concepts) is induced by the model. This distribution can be used to measure both what the model represents and how confident the probe is about what the model represents. GPP can be applied to any pre-trained model with vector representations of inputs (e.g., activations). It does not require access to training data, gradients, or the architecture. We validate GPP on datasets containing both synthetic and real images. Our experiments show it can (1) probe a model's representations of concepts even with a very small number of examples, (2) accurately measure both epistemic uncertainty (how confident the probe is) and aleatory uncertainty (how fuzzy the concepts are to the model), and (3) detect out of distribution data using those uncertainty measures as well as classic methods do. By using Gaussian processes to expand what probing can offer, GPP provides a data-efficient, versatile and uncertainty-aware tool for understanding and evaluating the capabilities of machine learning models.


Systemic sclerosis is a rare and incurable autoimmune disease in which patients are challenged with self-managing their disease. Systematic evaluation of the essential self-management intervention components and self-management outcomes is necessary to assess the state of the science of self-management for patients with systemic sclerosis. As such, the purpose of this systematic review was to identify and describe self-management interventions and their impact on self-management outcomes in adults with systemic sclerosis. Studies were included if they contained a self-management intervention, incorporated at least one self-management outcome identified as a common data element by the National Institute of Nursing Research (i.e., patient activation, self-efficacy, self-regulation, global health), and were conducted in adults with systemic sclerosis. Using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis guidelines, PubMed, Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature, and Embase were searched from the inception of each database to March 2020, yielding a total of 215 studies. Of these reports, 16 met the inclusion criteria for this review. There was notable variability in the types of self-management interventions and their effects on key self-management outcomes. Self-management interventions focused on improving physical function through rehabilitation programs were the most common interventions (n = 7). The poor methodological quality of the studies included in this systematic review, however, limited the synthesis of and recommendations for self-management interventions in adults with systemic sclerosis. Future research in systemic sclerosis should include key self-management outcomes in larger, more rigorously designed studies to allow for comparisons across studies and to advance the science of self-management.


The main purpose of this study is to examine the effect of increasing CO 2 removal and flow rate on performance of an amine still. The amine still is located in Field X in South East Sumatra at a new gas well producing gases with a rich CO 2 content. The still uses activated MDEA as the amine and has an IMTP 40-type packing column. Two film and desorption equilibrium curve theories were employed to analyse the amine still design conditions. Design equations were utilized to find the slope of the equilibrium curve. A slope of the equilibrium curve of 45° in the amine still is obtained in this study. The maximum liquid CO 2 composition of the amine still feedstock (xo) which can be separated to produce lean amine according to the specification design flow rate is 0.0307. The total flow rate of CO 2 -rich amine at x o = 0.029 is 761,157.6 kg/hour; the total flow rate of CO 2 -rich amine at x o = 0.0295 is 628,861.1 kg/hour; the total flow rate of CO 2 - rich amine at x o = 0.03 is 513,962.6 kg/hour; and the total flow rate of CO 2 -rich amine at x o = 0.0305 is 409,575.3 kg/hour.


traditional, authorized interpretative translation. So, pace the still unenlightened few, this is not a grammar of Jesus' language, and Golomb's principles will assure him of a mixed reception. This grammar is an unusual one, nonetheless: a synchronic analysis of a single document-indeed, most of the analysis is confmed to Genesis. It does not entirely confine itself to description and classification, but offers intelligent suggestions to a number


Abstract The commercialization of imazethapyr-resistant (Clearfield™, CL) rice in the southern United States has raised serious concerns about gene flow to red rice, producing imazethapyr-resistant red rice populations. Our objectives were to determine the impact of planting date, CL cultivars, and red rice biotypes on outcrossing rate; and to investigate the relative contribution of flowering time of CL rice and red rice biotypes, together with air temperature and relative humidity (RH), on outcrossing rate. Field experiments were conducted at Stuttgart, Rohwer, and Kibler, AR, from 2005 to 2007, at three or four planting times from mid-April to late May. 'CL161' (inbred cultivar) and 'CLXL8' (hybrid) rice were planted in nine-row plots, with red rice planted in the middle row. Twelve red rice biotypes were used. The flowering of red rice and CL rice, air temperature, and RH were recorded. Red rice seeds were collected at maturity. To estimate outcrossing rate, resistance to imazethapyr was evaluated in subsequent years and confirmed using rice microsatellite markers. CLXL8 rice flowered 2 to 4 d earlier than CL161 rice, and flowering was completed within 1 wk in all plantings. The flowering duration of most red rice biotypes ranged from 4 to 17 d. Flowering synchrony of red rice biotypes and CL rice ranged from 0 to 100% at different plantings. In general, CLXL8 had greater flowering overlap and higher outcrossing rate with red rice than did CL161 rice. The outcrossing rate of red rice biotypes ranged from 0 to 0.21% and 0 to 1.26% with CL161 and CLXL8 rice, respectively. The outcrossing rate differed within each planting date (P < 0.05). Outcrossing was generally lower in mid-May and late May than in mid-April and late April planting times. Flowering synchrony and outcrossing rate were not correlated (r2 < 0.01). Outcrossing with CL161 was primarily influenced by red rice biotype. A minimum air temperature of > 24 C in the evening also favors outcrossing with CL161. With CLXL8 rice, outcrossing was most affected by RH. When RH was < 54%, outcrossing was less (0.12%) than when RH was ≥ 54% (0.38%). With CLXL8 rice, a minimum RH of ≥ 54%, from mid-morning to noon, increased outcrossing with red rice. To fully understand the interaction effects of these factors on outcrossing with red rice, controlled experiments are needed. Nomenclature: Imazethapyr; Red rice, Oryza sativa L.; Rice, Oryza sativa L. ORYSA.


The traditional submarine voyage training has problems of high cost, long period and high risk. In this paper, a submarine voyage training simulation system was proposed based on virtual reality and submarine control theory. At first, the construction of the system and the functions of modules were described. The coach control system based on digital chart was realized, which can achieve functions of training environment and parameters setting. The model library of virtual ocean scene was built and then the scene was rended by Vega Prime. In order to remedy the deficiency of the network, a DR algorithm was explored, which can satisfy the realtime requirements of scene simulation and achieved the frame alignment between channels and coherence of observers.


School of Pharmacy semi-annual newsletter, initially named University of Colorado School of Pharmacy News, then School of Pharmacy News, and currently Pharmacy Perspectives.


We provide three new proofs of the strong concavity of the dual function of some convex optimization problems. For problems with nonlinear constraints, we show that the the assumption of strong convexity of the objective cannot be weakened to convexity and that the assumption that the gradients of all constraints at the optimal solution are linearly independent cannot be further weakened. Finally, we illustrate our results with several examples.


The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of colostrum consumption and feed restriction on biomarkers of stress, nutritional and health status, gut functionality, and behavior in male dairy beef calves being marketed and transported. A total of 82 male Holstein calves [42 ± 1.2 kg of body weight and 14 ± 0.9 d of age] were used to study the amount of colostrum given at birth at the dairy farm of origin, the degree of feed restriction suffered at an assembly center simulation (d -4 to d -1), and the effects of a 19 h transportation (d -1). Treatments were as follows: control calves (CTRL; n = 16) were fed 10 L of colostrum at the dairy farm of origin, milk replacer (MR) and concentrate at the assembly center, and were not transported; high colostrum-milk replacer fed calves (HCMR; n = 17) were fed 10 L of colostrum at the dairy farm of origin, MR at the assembly center, and were transported; high colostrum-rehydrating solution fed calves (HCRS; n = 16) were fed 10 L of colostrum at the dairy farm of origin, a rehydrating solution (RS) at the assembly center, and were transported; low colostrum-milk replacer fed calves (LCMR; n = 17), were fed 2 L of colostrum at the dairy farm of origin, MR at the assembly center, and were transported; and low colostrum-rehydrating solution fed calves (LCRS; n = 16) were fed 2 L of colostrum at the dairy farm of origin, RS at the assembly center, and were transported. Transported calves mimic a 19 h long transportation. After transport, all calves were fed 2.5 L of MR twice daily and had ad libitum access to concentrate, straw, and water. Calves' recovery was followed during 7 d. Concentrate intake and health records were collected daily from d -4 until d 7 and BW and blood samples were collected on d - 4, - 1, 0, 1, 2, and 7 of the study. Results showed that the feeding regimen provided at the assembly center reduced BW for the HCRS and LCRS calves compared with the CTRL, HCMR, and LCMR calves. Concentrate intake peaked on d 0 in the transported calves followed by a drop in intake on d 1 after transportation. Concentrate intake recovery was lower for the LCRS and LCMR calves. On d -1, nonesterified fatty acids and β-hydroxybutyrate concentrations were greater for the HCRS and LCRS calves compared with the CTRL, HCMR, and HCRS calves. After transportation, serum Cr-EDTA concentration was greater for the HCRS and LCRS calves than the HCMR, LCMR, and CTRL calves. The LCRS calves had the lowest serum concentration of citrulline. Finally, health scores were greater for the LCRS calves from d 0 to d 7. In summary, both the greatest degree of feed restriction during the assembly center and the low colostrum consumption at birth negatively affected the recovery of concentrate consumption and BW, gut functionality, health status, and behavior in calves after arrival at the rearing farm.


This paper proposes a novel technique to exploit the high bandwidth offered by through silicon vias (TSVs). In the proposed approach, synchronous parallel 3D links are replaced by serialized links to save silicon area and increase yield. Detailed analysis conducted in 90 nm CMOS technology shows that the proposed 2-Gb/s/pin quasi-serial link requires approximately five times less area than its parallel bus equivalent at same data rate for a TSV diameter of 20 µm.


There is a need to determine the factors transfer of training effectiveness has an impact on employee's Transfer Effort-performance Expectation (TE-PE). This study examines the Factors Transfer of Training: A Case of Private Organization. The study covered a sample of 148 respondents drawn from a total population of 216 employees in SAJ Holdings Sdn. Bhd. Muar. The sample was selected through convenient sampling techniques. Primary data was collected through the use of questionnaires. Data analyses that have been used in this research study are Pearson Correlation analysis, and Multiple Regression analysis. From the findings of Pearson Correlation analysis, all independent variables(Learner Readiness (LR), Motivation to Transfer (MT), Personal Capacity to Transfer (PCT) and Performance Self Efficacy (PSE))are significantly related to Transfer Effort-Performance Expectation (TE-PE).In addition, Learner Readiness (LR) is the influence variable with Pearson correlation is 0.367**, that related to Transfer effort- Performance Expectation (TE-PE). Finally, the most important independent variable in the regression model was Motivation to Transfer (MT) as it had the highest Beta value of 0.380. The study found out that Factors Transfer of training Effectiveness (Motivation to Transfer, Personal Capacity to Transfer, and Performance Self-Efficacy)affects Transfer Effort-Performance Expectation (TE-PE) levels among employees in SAJ Holdings Sdn. Bhd Muar. Where both independent and dependent variables move in the same direction. It indicates that proper independence variable of Motivation to Transfer (MT), Personal Capacity to Transfer (PCT) and Performance Self-Efficacy (PSE) brings more positive effect and vice versa for the employees.


A two dimensional boundary element method (BEM) formulation and computer program for creep problems based on an initial strain approach has been successfully implemented using Fortran code. Two creep laws which can be used in this program are time hardening and strain hardening. The details of the numerical algorithm are presented using isoparametric quadratic elements to model the boundary with 3-node boundary elements, and to model the interior domain with 8-node quadrilateral cells. The BEM program also covers the variable stress load problems. The creep problems of a square plate, a plate with a circular hole and a plate with a semicircular notch are investigated.

The boundary element formulation for creep problems has also been applied to creep damage mechanics problems. These types of problems have not been done by using the boundary element method before. A single damage variable is used in the program. The details of the numerical algorithm are presented. The two dimensional problems of creep damage in a rectangular plate and a square plate with a circular hole are tested and compared with the finite element solutions using ABAQUS UMAT.

A BEM program for combined plasticity and creep problems has also been established. It is assumed that the plasticity and creep processes are separable. The details of the numerical algorithm are presented. The problems of a square plate, a plate with a circular hole and a plate with a semicircular notch are investigated.

A BEM program for frictionless creep contact problems has been created. Similar to plasticity and creep problems, it is assumed that contact and creep processes are separable. In this program, it is assumed that the actual contact area is fixed during the creep procedure. The problems of a punch and a cylindrical punch on foundations are investigated.

The results of all problems above are compared with the finite element solutions using ABAQUS and the analytical solutions where available and shown to be in good agreement.


Introduction Multimodal interventions have emerged as new approaches to provide more targeted intervention to reduce functional decline after stroke. Still, the evidence is contradictory. The main objective of the Life After Stroke (LAST)-long trial is to investigate if monthly meetings with a stroke coordinator who offers a multimodal approach to long-term follow-up can prevent functional decline after stroke. Methods and analysis LAST-long is a pragmatic single-blinded, parallel-group randomised controlled trial recruiting participants living in six different municipalities, admitted to four hospitals in Norway. The patients are screened for inclusion and recruited into the trial 3 months after stroke. A total of 300 patients fulfilling the inclusion criteria will be randomised to an intervention group receiving monthly follow-up by a community-based stroke coordinator who identifies the participants' individual risk profile and sets up an action plan based on individual goals, or to a control group receiving standard care. All participants undergo blinded assessments at 6-month, 12-month and 18-month follow-up. Modified Rankin Scale at 18 months is primary outcome. Secondary outcomes are results of blood tests, blood pressure, adherence to secondary prophylaxis, measures of activities of daily living, cognitive function, physical function, physical activity, patient reported outcome measures, caregiver's burden, the use and costs of health services, safety measures and measures of adherence to the intervention. Mixed models will be used to evaluate differences between the intervention and control group for all endpoints across the four time points, with treatment group, time as categorical covariates and their interaction as fixed effects, and patient as random effect. Ethics and dissemination This trial was approved by the Regional Committee of Medical and Health Research Ethics, REC no. 2018/1809. The main results will be published in international peer-reviewed open access scientific journals and to policy-makers and end users in relevant channels. Trial registration number ClincalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03859063, registered on 1 March 2019.


In this work, digital circuits and systems based on single-electron tunneling technology will be presented and analyzed. A simple design methodology will be proposed using a programmable single-electron NAND/NOR gate as a building block. Aspects such as operating temperature, noise, and charge fluctuations will be discussed. SET devices can reach ultra-low power consumption and high frequencies during operation. Although there are already many digital SET circuits and systems previously proposed and studied, there are few works about design methodology for SETs. This study shows a proposal for designing combinational and sequential singleelectron circuits aiming at systems design. In the end, this work reinforces the use of single-electron technology as a possible large scale device in the future.


Event detection from real surveillance videos with complicated background environment is always a very hard task. Different from the traditional retrospective and interactive systems designed on this task, which are mainly executed on video fragments located within the event-occurrence time, in this paper we propose a new interactive system constructed on the mid-level discriminative representations (patches/shots) which are closely related to the event (might occur beyond the event-occurrence period) and are easier to be detected than video fragments. By virtue of such easily-distinguished mid-level patterns, our framework realizes an effective labor division between computers and human participants. The task of computers is to train classifiers on a bunch of mid-level discriminative representations, and to sort all the possible mid-level representations in the evaluation sets based on the classifier scores. The task of human participants is then to readily search the events based on the clues offered by these sorted mid-level representations. For computers, such mid-level representations, with more concise and consistent patterns, can be more accurately detected than video fragments utilized in the conventional framework, and on the other hand, a human participant can always much more easily search the events of interest implicated by these location-anchored mid-level representations than conventional video fragments containing entire scenes. Both of these two properties facilitate the availability of our framework in real surveillance event detection applications.


Results of a field study showed Cerambyx dux (Faldermann, 1837) (Coleoptera: Cerambycidae) to be a major economic pest of domestic apple orchards in north-western Syria. Higher levels of attack were detected on trees with larger trunk diameters. All trees with trunk diameters > 10 cm were infested (5 to 7 infestation holes per tree). For trees with trunk diameters 5 to 10 cm, the level of infestation was 87.8% (2 to 4 infestation holes per tree). No attack by the longhorn beetle C. dux was detected on trees with a trunk diameter < 5 cm.


337 to La:123. These results strengthen the contention of extended Pr-4f hybridization with Cu-0 conduction band and therefore unusually high T, of Pr and no superconductivity in the Pr:123 like system. *Research sponsored by: Australian Research Council GS-04. MAGNETIC PROPERTIES OF YBa2Cu303/SrRu03 MULTILAYERS. H. C. Yang. C. Y. Lin. L. M. Wang (Natl. Taiwan Univ., Dept. of Phys.. Taipei, 106 Taiwan), and H. E. Horng (Natl. Taiwan Normal Univ., Dept. of Phys., Taipei. 117 Taiwan) The magnetic susceptibility of YBaZCu30,/SrRu0, (YBCO/SRO) multilayers was measured to study the effects of the layer coupling on the superconducting transition and ferromagnetic order. The YBCO and SRO films were prepared by the pulse laser ablation. The CaRuO, thin film reveals a ferromagnetic order at T160 K while YBCO film is superconducting at T-90 K. The superconducting transition was reduced owing to the presence of the SRO layers. On the other hand, the presence of the YBCO layer effects the ferromagnetic ordering. The results are discussed. Supported by National Science Council of the Republic under grants NSC86-2 1 12-M002-033 and NSC86-2112-M003-012. GS-05. MAGNETIC PROPERTIES OF Pb2Sr2PrCu308 STUDIED USING AC SUSCEPTIBILITY. S . Y. Wu, W.-H. Li, K. C. Lee (Dept. of Phys.. Natl. Central Univ., Chung-Li, Taiwan 32054, ROC), J. H. Shieh, and H. C. Ku (Dept. of Phys., Natl. Tsing Hua Univ. Hsinchu. Taiwan 300, ROC) The magnetic response of Pb,SrzPrCu30s to the applied magnetic field has been studied by ac magnetic susceptibility measurements. Both the in-phase component x ' and the out-of-phase component x'' of the ac susceptibility reveal superconductivity below 60 K and h ordering with TN-7 K. A dc magnetic field of strength 0.5 kOe destroys 50% of the Meissner diamagnetic response, which however persists up to a strength of I O kOe. The effect of the applied dc field on the diamagnetic screening of the superconducting state may be well described using the pair breaking mechanism. Below 15 K, both x' and x" may be decomposed into two components: one of superconductivity and the other of magnetic ordering of the Pr spins. The latter was found to be sensitive to the frequency as well as to the strength of the driving field, while the former was found not. The correlated Pr spins respond "better" to a driving field of lower frequency or lower strength, indicating a relative long spin relaxation time for the correlated Pr spins. These behaviors are similar to what have been observed in the spin glass systems. GS-06. SYNTHESIS AND TRANSPORT PROPERTIES OF Pr2Ba4Cu,015-s SINGLE CRYSTALS. Yuh Yamada', Akiyuki Matsushita', Shigeru Horii3, Jinhua Ye', Yasuji Yamada4, and Izumi Hirabayashi' ('Dept. of Material Sci. Shimane Univ., Matsue 690, Japan, 2Nat'l. Res. Inst. for Metals, Tsukuba 305, Japan, 'Dept. of Crystal. Mater. Sci., Nagoya Univ., Nagoya 464-01. Japan, 'Div. VIII, Superconductivity Res. Lab., ISTEC, Nagoya 456, Japan) We reported to synthesize the polycrystalline PrBa2Cu,08 (Pr124) and Pr zBa4Cu,0,,-8 (h247) by using the high oxygen pressure technique and the electrical resistivity of the Pr124 and Pr247 was found to exhibits a metallic temperature dependence below 180K.'.' This behavior provides an interesting contrast to the semiconducting one of PrBa,Cu7O7(Pr123). From the results of pressure effects on the electrical resistivities of these systems. we have attributed the metallic behavior to the conduction through the double chains.' Therefore it is interesting to synthesis the single crystal and study these systems for the direction dependence of the electrical resistivities. In this work we report that the single crystal Pr247 oxides was synthesized for the first time by using the Flux method under high oxygen pressure and measured the direction dependence of the electrical resistivities. ' Y . Yamada et al.. Phisica C 231 (1994) 131. 'A. Matsushita, er al., Phisica C 24.2 (1994) 381. GS-07. SPECIFIC HEAT, MAGNETIZATION AND C-ISOTOPE EFFECT OF Y2C2(I,Br), SUPERCONDUCTORS. Walter Schnelle, Rudiger W. Henn. Thomas Gulden, and Reinhard K. Kremer (Max-Planck-Institut fur Festkorperforschung, Heisenbergstrasse 1, 70569


With the advancements in social media and rising demand for real traffic information, the data shared in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) indicate that the size and amount of requested data will continue increasing. Vehicles in the same area often have similar data downloading requests. If we ignore the common requests, the resource allocation efficiency of the VANET system will be quite low. Motivated by this fact, we propose an efficient and privacy-preserving data downloading scheme for VANETs, based on the edge computing concept. In the proposed scheme, a roadside unit (RSU) can find the popular data by analyzing the encrypted requests sent from nearby vehicles without having to sacrifice the privacy of their download requests. Further, the RSU caches the popular data in nearby qualified vehicles called edge computing vehicles (ECVs). If a vehicle wishes to download the popular data, it can download it directly from the nearby ECVs. This method increases the downloading efficiency of the system. The security analysis results show that the proposed scheme can resist multiple security attacks. The performance analysis results demonstrate that our scheme has reasonable computation and communication overhead. Finally, the OMNeT++ simulation results indicate that our scheme has good network performance.


ABSTRACT

AndroSAT: Security Analysis Tool for Android Applications

With about 1.5 million Android device activations per day and billions of applications installation from Google Play, Android is becoming one of the most widely used operating systems for smartphones and tablets.

Besides typical personal usages, Android mobile devices are also being integrated into enterprises, government organizations, and military networks. Consequently, these devices hold valuable sensitive information which makes them face the same level of malicious attacks that have targeted the desktop environments over the past three decades.

In this thesis, we present AndroSAT, a Security Analysis Tool for Android applications. The developed framework allows us to efficiently experiment with different security aspects of Android apps through the integration of (i) a static analysis module that scans Android apps for malicious patterns. The static analysis process involves several steps such as n-gram analysis of dex files, de-compilation of the app, pattern search, and analysis of the AndroidManifest file; (ii) a dynamic analysis sandbox that executes Android apps in a controlled virtual environment which logs low-level interactions with the operating system.
The effectiveness of the developed framework is confirmed by testing it on popular apps collected from F-Droid, and malware samples obtained from a third party and the Android Malware Genome Project dataset. As a case study, we show how the analysis reports obtained from AndroSAT can be used for studying the frequency of use of different Android permissions and dynamic operations and detection of Android malware.


Automation of brain tumors in 3D magnetic resonance images (MRIs) is key to assess the diagnostic and treatment of the disease. In recent years, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have shown improved results in the task. However, high memory consumption is still a problem in 3D-CNNs. Moreover, most methods do not include uncertainty information, which is specially critical in medical diagnosis. This work proposes a 3D encoder-decoder architecture, based on V-Net \cite{vnet} which is trained with patching techniques to reduce memory consumption and decrease the effect of unbalanced data. We also introduce voxel-wise uncertainty, both epistemic and aleatoric using test-time dropout and data-augmentation respectively. Uncertainty maps can provide extra information to expert neurologists, useful for detecting when the model is not confident on the provided segmentation.


The purpose of this research is to show how radical Islamic terrorist organisations like Al-Qaeda and ISIS have been able to infiltrate African societies and exploit their conflict in order to spread their own ideology. This paper looks at Algeria and Nigeria, two major countries on the African continent that have been plagued by terrorism since the late 20th century, and how the terrorist groups known as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Boko Haram, and the Islamic State West Africa (IS-WA) came to be in their respective nations. It was a combination of internal and external factors that allowed insurgent groups and later terrorist organisations to take hold of these two nations with the internal factors revolving around the political and economic development of Algeria and Nigeria. However it is impossible to tell the causality of these factors, as one does not cause the other. These factors include high unemployment rates, lack of state capacity, poverty, corruption, religion, and institutional weakness. The combination of these factors is what ultimately allowed radical Islamic terrorism to gain a foothold in the North and Western regions of Africa.


Nuclear power production can bene fi t from the development of more comprehensive alternatives for dealing with long-term radioactive waste. One such alternative is an accelerator-driven subcritical reactor (ADSR) which has been proposed for both energy production and for burn-ing radioactive waste. Here we investigate the effects of the size of the ADSR spallation target on the total neutron yield integrated over the neutron energy and emission an-gle. The contribution to the total neutron yield from the (n, xn) neutron interactions is evaluated at proton beam energies between 0.4 and 2 GeV. Calculations have been carried out with the GEANT4 simulation code using the Liege intranuclear cascade model and the results are compared to the the LAHET/MCNP code package predictions.


SUMMARY Using a proteomics approach, a PP2C-type phosphatase (renamed PIA1, for PP2C induced by AvrRpm1) was identified that accumulates following infection by Pseudomonas syringae expressing the type III effector AvrRpm1, and subsequent activation of the corresponding plant NB-LRR disease resistance protein RPM1. No accumulation of PIA1 protein was seen following infection with P. syringae expressing AvrB, another type III effector that also activates RPM1, although PIA transcripts were observed. Accordingly, mutation of PIA1 resulted in enhanced RPM1 function in response to P. syringae pathover tomato (Pto) DC3000 (avrRpm1) but not to Pto DC3000 (avrB). Thus, PIA1 is a protein marker that distinguishes AvrRpm1-and AvrB-dependent activation of RPM1. AvrRpm1-induced expression of the pathogenesis-related genes PR1, PR2 and PR3, and salicylic acid accumulation were reduced in two pia1 mutants. By contrast, expression of other defense-related genes, including PR5 and PDF1.2 (plant defensin), was elevated in unchallenged pia1 mutants. Hence, PIA1 is required for AvrRpm1-induced responses, and confers dual (both positive and negative) regulation of defense gene expression.


Within the past five years we have performed excision of one quadrant of the ciliary body (pars plicata) (e.c.b.) in 22 eyes with secondary narrow-angle glaucoma. Prior to e.c.b. numerous surgical procedures for glaucoma had been attempted. Sixteen of the eyes were aphakic, six phakic. In nine eyes secondary angle closure was due to rubeosis iridis. The observation period following e.c.b. averaged 27.4 months. The preoperative tensions ranged between 40 and 50 mmHg. In 12 out of 22 eyes e.c.b. alone was sufficient to lower the intraocular pressure permanently; in seven cases local therapy (Timolol, Eppystabil) and/or oral Diamox respectively had to be added. Two eyes became atrophic and blind between one and 1.5 years following e.c.b.


Susceptibility to autoimmunity is determined by multiple factors. Defining the contribution of the quantitative versus qualitative aspects of antigen-directed immune responses as well as the factors influencing target organ susceptibility is vital to advancing the understanding of the pathogenesis of autoimmunity. In a series of studies, we have addressed these issues using the adjuvant-induced arthritis (AA) model of human rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Lewis rats are susceptible to AA following immunization with heat-killed Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Ra, whereas Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) rats of the same MHC (major histocompatibility complex) haplotype are resistant. Comparative studies on these and other susceptible/resistant rodent strains have offered interesting insights into differential cytokine responses in the face of comparable T cell proliferative response to the disease relevant antigens. Study of the cytokine kinetics have also permitted validation of the disease-protective versus disease-aggravating effects of specific cytokines by treatment of rats/mice with those cytokines at different phases of the disease. In regard to the target organ attributes, the migration of arthritogenic leukocytes into the joints; the expression of mediators of inflammation, angiogenesis, and tissue damage; the role of vascular permeability; and the characteristics of vascular endothelial cells have been examined. Further, various inhibitors of angiogenesis are effective in suppressing arthritis. Taken together, the differential cytokine responses and unique attributes of the target organ have revealed novel aspects of disease susceptibility and joint damage in AA. The translation of this basic research in animal models to RA patients would not only advance our understanding of the disease process, but also offer novel avenues for immunomodulation of this disease.


A new species of Microglanis is described from the upper rio Tocantins basin, Barro Alto, Goias State, Brazil. This species is distinguished from the others by presenting a unique color pattern, consisting of round spots in the flank between the larger dark brown blotches. Moreover, it can be distinguished by the combination of the following features: caudal fin emarginate, the upper lobe slightly larger than the lower, lateral line relatively long, reaching vertical through posterior margin of the pelvic fin, and light stripe on supra-occipital region absent or very narrow and with irregular shape.


The process of translating words across cultures often presents some challenges to the translator. Context of course is crucial and often can alter meaning. So to prepare for today's luncheon, I consulted the Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner German-English Dictionary and discovered that in the context of a luncheon tribute, "festschrift" is a synonym for "shtupfest," which means "roast."1 In that spirit, I am happy to share with you some of my reflections on the impact Marty Redish has had on my career and professional life.I arrived on the Northwestern campus in the late summer of 1978. Long sideburns, blow-drying, and disco were in, as was the color orange. Asteroids, Space Invaders, and later PacMan were the state-of-the-art rage in video games. Annie Hall won the Academy Award for best picture that year, and the year before, John Travolta had starred in Saturday Night Fever.Yet although outside the law school's walls it was the 1970s, much of the faculty appeared to be in various stages of recovery from the 1960s. I recently saw Dan Polsby, now Dean at the George Mason University School of Law, and I am pleased to report that his personal recovery continues, although slowly.Marty appeared to have skipped the '60s. He wore dark suits and drove a Buick (or was it an Oldsmobile?). For Marty, "fahrvergnugen" had nothing to do with the joy of driving a Volkswagen; it was all about a good law review placement. In 1978, he was on a roll as a junior faculty member, having recently published articles in the Michigan,2 Texas,3 and University of Chicago4 law reviews. Then the big kahuna finally came-with Carter Phillips, another former research assistant, he published his first article in the Harvard Law Review,5 followed a year later by yet another with Cornell.6 I still recall the impressive shelf in his office where he had neatly and discretely stacked 10,000 reprints, which he nonchalantly offered to random passersby.Something of a cross between Marv Albert and Johnny Carson, Professor Redish entered the Civil Procedure classroom with a flourish, as if the Tonight Show band were playing its overture as he hopped up onto the platform at the head of the room. "Heeeeeeerrrrrre's Marty!!" And assured that he had shared with us an especially insightful observation, one expected at any moment he might come unglued and shout out, "REDISH, from downtown; YES!" Ironically from today's perspective, he seemed to be a "class" act who could enable class in others, although in an entirely nonsubstantive way.7Marty's teaching style and infectious enthusiasm presented some problems for me. I suffered from overexposure to television as a child, and some of his favorite phrases triggered random associations. For example, Marty seemed to be enamored with the word "tensions." Having now passed through my thirties as well, I better understand what that might have been about-but as Steve Presser used to say, "I digress."8In my mind, "tensions" conjured an image of impressionist Frank Gorshin doing his imitation of Kirk Douglas as Spartacus proclaiming, "I'm feeling a lot of TENSIONs in the allocation of ROman POWer!!" Marty also liked the phrase "macho federalism," which let loose images of Jay, Hamilton, and Madison striding through Brooklyn with John Travolta, shirts open, chest hair flaring, gold chains dangling.Marty Redish, "staying alive . . . ."I startled him with a Bronx cheer from the rear of the room, shouting "OK."He also taught us about the outmoded "Byrd balancing,"9 which now may be making an unexpected comeback,10 and I imagined holding cooing pigeons in both of my hands, standing erect like a scale of justice and weighing federal and state interests."Coooo, coooo." That was pretty eerie.Despite my occasional outbursts, Marty also proved to be an enthusiastic mentor and personal professional trainer. To my enduring gratification, he selected me as his research assistant for the summer of 1979. …


Some environmental parameters and nutrients like inorganic phosphate, nitrate, nitrite and ammonia from four estuaries namely Kallai, Beypore, Korapuzha and Mahe along north Kerala Coast were studied for an year (1980-81). In all these estuaries seasonal variations in environmental features were related to the monsoonal cycle and follows the pattern reported for other estuaries of west coast of India. Inorganic phosphate did not show any clear pattern or pronounced seasonal variations. Inorganic phosphate and ammonia were high at Kallai compared to other three estuaries. All the estuaries showed an increase in nitrate content during monsoon. Nitrite values were high in postmonsoon. Ammonia levels were generally high except at Korapuzha. Nutrient content was in general higher in the bottom waters than in the surface in these estuaries. The present values are compared to the reported figures of other west coast estuaries and discussed


We present a model that learns active learning algorithms via metalearning. For each metatask, our model jointly learns: a data representation, an item selection heuristic, and a one-shot classifier. Our model uses the item selection heuristic to construct a labeled support set for the one-shot classifier. Using metatasks based on the Omniglot and MovieLens datasets, we show that our model performs well in synthetic and practical settings.


(1) The native grass Diplachne fusca has become an important weed in rice fields in temperate Australia since rice cultivation began there in 1922. Field and glasshouse experiments were conducted to examine the population dynamics of D.fusca in rice fields and to develop strategies for its control. (2) D. fusca can develop a persistent seed bank, with 48 000 seeds m-2 (0-6 cm depth) measured at one site 18 months after the last seed input. No seedlings emerged from depths > 10 mm whereas 60% of seedlings arose from seed lying on the soil surface. Emergence was strongly inhibited by the presence of litter or living pasture plants. The highest seedling density was on bare ground (1480 rn-2), but this represented < 5%/o of the seed bank. (3) The patterns of seedling emergence were similar to those observed after experimentally storing seeds for 7 5 months in a range of semi-natural and artificial storage conditions. High dormancy levels were found in seed which had been stored dry and exposed to natural weather conditions. Storage in water gave the highest germination, but a single drying cycle reduced germination from 44% to 10%. Darkness inhibited germination of non-dormant seed. (4) The development of dormant seed reserves in the soil and the dependence on open areas for regeneration are features that D. fusca shares with many arable weeds and colonizing species. These features, as well as the loss of seed dormancy with prolonged flooding, are interpreted as adaptations to intermittent wetlands, the natural habitat of D.fusca prior to its invasion of rice fields.


Jeremy Paxman knows every maneouvre a politician will make to avoid answering a difficult question, but in "The Political Animal" he seeks an answer to just one: What makes politicians tick? Embarking on a journey in which he encounters movers and shakers past and present, he discovers: that Prime Ministers have often lost a parent in childhood why Trollope is the politician's novelist of choice that Lloyd George once hunted Jack the Ripper how an Admiral's speech in parliament helped win WWII. Where do politicians come from? How do they get elected? What do they do all day? And why do they seek power? All these questions and many more are addressed in Paxman's thrilling dissection of that strange and elusive breed - the political animal. "Lively, persuasive, excellent. Boisterous and funny, provocative and punchily written ...an intelligent romp". (Matthew Parris, "Spectator"). "Entertaining, informative, incisive and insightful". (Andrew Rawnsley "Observer"). "One of the best primers on the vicissitudes of political life I have read". (Christopher Silvester, "Sunday Times"). Jeremy Paxman is a journalist, best known for his work presenting "Newsnight" and "University Challenge". His books include "Empire", "On Royalty", "The English" and "The Political Animal". He lives in Oxfordshire.


In this paper, an improved audio classification and categorization technique is presented. This technique makes use of wavelets and support vector machines (SVMs) to accurately classify and categorize audio data. When a query audio is given, wavelets are first applied to extract acoustical features such as subband power and pitch information. Then, the proposed method uses a bottom-up SVM over these acoustical features and additional parameters, such as frequency cepstral coefficients, to accomplish audio classification and categorization. A public audio database (Muscle Fish), which consists of 410 sounds in 16 classes, is used to evaluate the performances of the proposed method against other similar schemes. Experimental results show that the classification errors are reduced from 16 (8.1%) to six (3.0%), and the categorization accuracy of a given audio sound can achieve 100% in the Top 2 matches.


Statistical distributions are important in modeling the real life of an item and therefore proper distributions that provide useful information for sound conclusions and decisions are needed. For that reason, the demand for developing new generalized distributions have become appropriate for data that have both monotonic and non-monotonic hazard rate functions. In this paper, we develop a new distribution called the Type II Topp-Leone-G Power Series (TIITLGPS) distribution by compounding the Type II Topp-Leone-G (TIITLG) distribution with the power series distribution. Statistical properties of the TIITLGPS distribution are obtained. A variety of shapes for the densities and hazard rate are presented of the considered special case. A simulation study to examine the efficiency of the maximum likelihood estimates is also conducted. Finally, the bladder cancer data example is analyzed for illustrative purposes, it is displayed that the introduced distribution provides better fit when compared to other non-nested distributions considered in this work.


Green, Rohling, Lees-Haley, and Allen (2001) suggested that scores on a test of "effort," the Word Memory Test (WMT), explains more variance in outcome after brain injury than does injury severity. As a consequence, Green and colleagues recommend using the WMT to control for sub-optimal effort in neuropsychological evaluations and group research. We re-examine the evidence for their conclusions and argue that identifying a larger proportion of explained variance is not in itself evidence of validity unless the premise to be proven is already assumed, namely, that the test is a valid measure of effort. Instead, the crux of Green and colleagues claim for the validity of the WMT implies an interaction between effort and injury severity on outcome scores, although the specific interaction has not been tested in their previous research. We failed to find any evidence for this interaction in a sample of 100 Australian litigants. We conclude that our data do not support the view that effort, as measured by the WMT, interacts with injury severity to suppress cognition after brain injury.


Abstract Objective: Based on the Health Action Process Approach, we tested the efficacy of a theory-based program using an online social media platform (Telegram) to promote good oral hygiene behaviour among Iranian adolescents. Design: A three-arm randomized-controlled trial design was used, consisting of an adolescent only intervention group (A group; n = 253), an adolescent and mother intervention group (A + M group; n = 260), and a control group (n = 278). Main outcome measures: Psychosocial variables, toothbrushing behaviour, Visual Plaque Index, and Community Periodontal Index. Results: Increases in adolescent toothbrushing at the one- and six-month follow-ups in both intervention groups compared to the control group were observed. Adolescents in the A + M group showed significant greater improvements in their toothbrushing behaviour, Visual Plaque Index, and Community Periodontal Index scores than adolescents in the A group. Improvements to toothbrushing social cognitions were also observed. Conclusions: Current results support the use of the theory-based program delivered by Telegram in improving good oral hygiene behaviour and oral health outcomes among Iranian adolescents. Involving mothers in an intervention can confer additional benefits for adolescent oral health.


Gender stereotyping in child development and education is a known issue but as yet little attention has been given to the design for change, or at least attenuate, stereotypical thinking. In our research we explored how Digital StoryTelling (DST) could support children in their awareness of negative gender stereotypes. Following a participatory design-inspired approach we involved 43 participants; children and adults (teachers and experts in the domain), in three workshops with the purpose of exploring this design space. Here, we describe this full process and its outcomes: nine concepts to guide the design of a DST tool. The workflow and toolbox used during the process are instances of an approach that could be replicated in other contexts and/or to challenge other types of stereotypes. The main contribution of our research is towards the design for change with and for children. We hope that our work will inspire members of our community to address these issues.


Due to manufacturing and assembly variations, there are tolerances associated with the nominal dimensions of complex electromagnetic devices. A possible approach to take into account such tolerances in the early design phases is the "worst case tolerance analysis," whose goal is to determine the effect of the largest variations on assembly dimensions on the product performance. On the other hand, when many tolerances must be considered, locating the worst case with combinatorial effects could get very time consuming, since performance assessment of such devices may require numerical field analysis. In this paper, a fast approach based on the performance sensitivity with respect to design parameters is presented, and applied to the tolerance analysis of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) magnets.


Broad applications of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) dictate the necessity to better understand their health effects. Poor recognition of non-functionalized SWCNT by phagocytes is prohibitive towards controlling their biological action. We report that SWCNT coating with a phospholipid "eat-me" signal, phosphatidylserine (PS), makes them recognizable in vitro by different phagocytic cells - murine RAW264.7 macrophages, primary monocyte-derived human macrophages, dendritic cells, and rat brain microglia. Macrophage uptake of PS-coated nanotubes was suppressed by the PS-binding protein, Annexin V, and endocytosis inhibitors, and changed the pattern of pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokine secretion. Loading of PS-coated SWCNT with pro-apoptotic cargo (cytochrome c) allowed for the targeted killing of RAW264.7 macrophages. In vivo aspiration of PS-coated SWCNT stimulated their uptake by lung alveolar macrophages in mice. Thus, PS-coating can be utilized for targeted delivery of SWCNT with specified cargoes into professional phagocytes, hence for therapeutic regulation of specific populations of immune-competent cells.


Toxicity studies have established the need for information concerning species distribution of heavy metals in the environment. In aquatic environments, the nature of trace metals, whether free, adsorbed, or complexed controls impact on biota. Often, major portions of the trace metals present in an aquatic system are immobilized on suspended particulates. Changes in environmental conditions such as pH, soluble ligand concentration and type, and concentration of suspended particulate material in the water column, can affect speciation of a metal. Filter feeding organisms are especially susceptable to these environmental changes. High bioconcentrations of trace metal species which are available to organisms can retard growth or cause mortality as well as posing a hazard to human ingestion. In an attempt to investigate the bioavailability of particulate-bound metals under varying environmental conditions, we have developed a syringe drive system employing a membrane sandwiched chelating resin. The device consists of a cassette containing 100 mg of Chelex-100 sandwiched between two 0.40 um Polycarbonate membranes. While the device is similar to the one described by Kerfoot and Vaccaro (1975), it has been modified from a passive system dependent upon diffusional processes to an active mode in which a syringe draws solution through the cassette and then expels it to the bulk solution. Free metal ions, metal complexes in solution, and some particulates which are smaller than 0.40 um pass the membrane and are retained in the cassette. The construction allows a great deal of versatility in choice of membranes, their porosity, and the chelating resin used. The exchange rate with the primary solution may also be varied within a large range by appropriate selection of the step-function speed reducer connected to the drive motor. This versatility enables the experimenter to match the performance of the device to his needs. Early experiments with pure copper nitrate solutions established the reproducibility and effectiveness of the method as a trace metal scavenging technique. Mathematical simulation results were matched closely by experimental data obtained with atomic absorption spectrometry. To study the release characteristics of trace metals, illite clay was "contaminated" with known amounts of trace metals and suspended in aqueous solutions. Continuous agitation was provided. As the cassette removes metal from solution, the clay is driven by equilibrium considerations to desorb more metal ions to the system. In numerous trials, it has been possible to achieve mass balance for metal collected in the cassette compared to metal lost by the clay. The desorption curves generated at various pH levels show features which can be interpreted to yield speciation characteristics of the solutions. Ion selective electrode work in conjunction with atomic absorption spectrometry has aided in elucidating the ratio of free to total trace metal content of the solutions. Results from this research may be utilized in predicting the impact of the changes in environmental variables such as pH and the disposal of metal-rich wastes.


Recessive variants in GBA1 cause Gaucher disease, a prevalent form of lysosome storage disease. GBA1 encodes a lysosomal enzyme that hydrolyzes glucosylceramide (GlcCer) into glucose and ceramide. Its loss causes lysosomal dysfunction and increased levels of GlcCer. We generated a null allele of the Drosophila ortholog Gba1b by inserting the Gal4 using CRISPR-Cas9. Here, we show that Gba1b is expressed in glia but not in neurons. Glial-specific knockdown recapitulates the defects found in Gba1b mutants, and these can be rescued by glial expression of human GBA1. We show that GlcCer is synthesized upon neuronal activity, and it is transported from neurons to glia through exosomes. Furthermore, we found that glial TGF-β/BMP induces the transfer of GlcCer from neurons to glia and that the White protein, an ABCG transporter, promotes GlcCer trafficking to glial lysosomes for degradation.


Large cell neuroendocrine carcinoma (LCNEC) has an especially poor prognosis, and an effective therapeutic strategy has yet to be established. We have previously shown that the expressions of tropomyosin-related kinase B (TRKB) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) are high in LCNEC and that TRKB/BDNF signaling is involved in the proliferation, tumorigenesis, and invasive nature of LCNEC. Therefore, TRKB/BDNF signaling may offer a potential therapeutic target for LCNEC treatment. In the present study, we evaluated whether the TRKB tyrosine kinase inhibitor, k252a, has effects on tumor regression and relapse prevention on LCNEC, using a murine xenograft model. The LCNEC cell line and NCI-H810 cells were subcutaneously implanted into the flanks or intrathoracically injected into the bilateral pleural cavities of BALB/c nude mice. k252a significantly inhibited tumor volume, expression of matrix metalloproteinases and the formation of pleural dissemination by LCNEC. These results suggest that k252a has potential for tumor regression and relapse prevention in LCNEC. Since many patients with LCNEC suffer through the use of ineffective therapeutic strategies, a clinical trial using the TRKB inhibitor for LCNEC is urgently required.


Early researchers identified key concepts and developed tactics for multiple option management of nematodes. Traditional management tactics include host resistance (where available), cultural tactics such as rotation with nonhosts, sanitation and avoidance, and destruction of residual crop roots and judicious use of nematicides. There have been advances in biological control of nematodes, but field-scale exploitation of this tactic remains to be realized. New technologies and resources are currently becoming central to the development of sustainable systems for nematode-pest-crop management, molecular diagnostics for nematode identification, genetic engineering for host resistance, and the elucidation and application of soil biology for general integrated cropping systems. The latter strategy includes use of nematode-pest antagonistic cover crops, animal wastes, and limited tillage practices that favor growth-promoting rhizobacteria, earthworms, predatory mites, and other beneficial organisms while suppressing parasitic nematodes and other plant pathogens. Certain rhizobacteria may induce systemic host resistance to nematodes and, in some instances, to foliage pathogens. The systems focusing on soil biology hold great promise for sustainable crop-nematode management, but only a few research programs are currently involved in this labor-intensive endeavor.


The vast majority of Malaysia's fishermen are located in rural areas, specifically in the Western and Eastern coastal regions of Peninsular Malaysia and the Sabah and Sarawak central zones. In these areas, the fishing industry is relied upon as a major economic contributor to the region's residents. Despite the widespread application of various modern technologies into the fishing industry (i.e., GPS, sonar, echo sounder, remote sensing), and the Malaysian government's efforts to encourage their adoption, many small-scale fishermen in the country's rural areas continue to rely on traditional fishing methods. This refusal to embrace new technologies has resulted in significant losses in fish yields and needed income, and has raised many questions regarding the inputs to decision making of the fishermen. Drawing on multiple literatures, in this article we argue for the use of a mental model approach to gain an in-depth understanding of rural Malaysian fishermen's choices of technology adoption according to four main constructs--prior experience, knowledge, expertise and beliefs or values. To provide needed inputs to agricultural specialists and related policy makers for the development of relevant plans of action, this article aims to provide a way forward for others to understand dispositional barriers to technology adoption among fishermen who use traditional methods in non-Western contexts.


To generate adaptive movements, we must generalize what we have previously learned to novel situations. The generalization of learned movements has typically been framed as a consequence of neural tuning functions that overlap for similar movement kinematics. However, as is true in many domains of human behavior, situations that require generalization can also be framed as inference problems. Here, we attempt to broaden the scope of theories about motor generalization, hypothesizing that part of the typical motor generalization function can be characterized as a consequence of top-down decisions about different movement contexts. We tested this proposal by having participants make explicit similarity ratings over traditional contextual dimensions (movement directions) and abstract contextual dimensions (target shape), and perform a visuomotor adaptation generalization task where trials varied over those dimensions. We found support for our predictions across five experiments, which revealed a tight link between subjective similarity and motor generalization. Our findings suggest that the generalization of learned motor behaviors is influenced by both low-level kinematic features and high-level inferences.


This paper addresses voltage distortion in the frequency range 2 to 9 kHz, above what is normally considered in harmonic studies. By extrapolating the voltage-distortion limits that exist in international standards for distortion up to 2 kHz, it is concluded that 0.5% of nominal voltage per 200-Hz band is a safe limit. This limit is next used to estimate the number of small generator units (1-10 kW) that can be connected to a low-voltage grid. It is concluded that in some cases the connection of one or just a few units already leads to a distortion level above the limit.


Cytoplasmic RNA granules represent subcellular compartments that are enriched in protein-bound RNA species. RNA granules are produced by evolutionary divergent eukaryotes, including yeast, mammals, and plants. The functions of cytoplasmic RNA granules differ widely. They are dictated by the cell type and physiological state, which in turn is determined by intrinsic cell properties and environmental factors. RNA granules provide diverse cellular functions. However, all of the granules contribute to aspects of RNA metabolism. This is exemplified by transcription, RNA storage, silencing, and degradation, as well as mRNP remodeling and regulated translation. Several forms of cytoplasmic mRNA granules are linked to normal physiological processes. For instance, they may coordinate protein synthesis and thereby serve as posttranscriptional "operons". RNA granules also participate in cytoplasmic mRNA trafficking, a process particularly well understood for neurons. Many forms of RNA granules support the preservation of somatic cell performance under normal and stress conditions. On the other hand, severe insults or disease can cause the formation and persistence of RNA granules that contribute to cellular dysfunction, especially in the nervous system. Neurodegeneration and many other diseases linked to RNA granules are associated with aging. Nevertheless, information related to the impact of aging on the various types of RNA granules is presently very limited. This review concentrates on cytoplasmic RNA granules and their role in somatic cell maintenance. We summarize the current knowledge on different types of RNA granules in the cytoplasm, their assembly and function under normal, stress, or disease conditions. Specifically, we discuss processing bodies, neuronal granules, stress granules, and other less characterized cytoplasmic RNA granules. Our focus is primarily on mammalian and yeast models, because they have been critical to unravel the physiological role of various RNA granules. RNA granules in plants and pathogens are briefly described. We conclude our viewpoint by summarizing the emerging concepts for RNA granule biology and the open questions that need to be addressed in future studies.


We compute the far-from-equilibrium dynamics of relativistic scalar quantum fields in 3+1 space-time dimensions starting from over-occupied initial conditions. We determine universal scaling exponents and functions for two-point correlators and the four-vertex in a self-similar regime in time and space or momenta. The scaling form of the momentum-dependent four-vertex exhibits a dramatic fall-off towards low momenta. Comparing spectral functions (commutators) and statistical correlations (anti-commutators) of field operators allows us to detect strong violations of the fluctuation-dissipation relation in this non-perturbative infrared regime. Based on a self-consistent expansion in the number of field components to next-to-leading order, a wide range of interaction strengths is analyzed and compared to weak-coupling estimates in effective kinetic theory and classical-statistical field theory.


As part of Wellington Zoo's current management philosophy to reduce the number of species and increase enclosure size, quality and appropriateness for those remaining animals, the zoo's colony of hamadryas baboons (Papio cynocephalus hamadryas) was relocated within the zoo to a purpose-designed and more naturalistic exhibit. The primary objective of this investigation was to determine group and individual responses of five of these baboons to their new enclosure. In so doing, this investigation was intended to address the shortage of quantitative, species-specific information on environmental enrichment for Papio baboons (Kessel and Brent 1996). The data collection method used in this investigation consisted of fifteen-minute focal sampling of each of the five focal animals in the two months before and the month following the colony's relocation. For the purposes of this investigation, these focal samples were initially analysed together, prior to each focal animal being considered independently. Analysis of data extracted from these focal samples included consideration of: • The overall occurrence of individual behaviours between the former and new enclosures; • Additions to the animals' behavioural repertoires upon relocation; and, • Time the animals spent alone and interacting socially. Upon the colony's relocation, changes in the combined focal animals' behaviour were anticipated as a result of greater space, areas of privacy, and increased environmental variation. Focal sampling revealed increasingly naturalistic behaviours, including a reduction in vacuum and vestigial behaviours, and an increase in speciestypical behaviour. Results also indicated that the combined focal animals experienced unexpectedly low levels of "agonistic" (i.e. aggressive) behaviour in both enclosures. However, there was a reduction in some associated behaviours upon the colony's relocation. This included a decline in male rivalry over females. Differences in the responses of individual focal animals to relocation were also anticipated. Of particular interest were results indicating an increasing similarity of individual roles within one-male units to those of free-ranging hamadryas baboons. These roles were associated with both age and sex. This study raises implications for improving the current management of the Wellington Zoo colony and other captive hamadryas baboon colonies. These include emphasising the importance of appropriate husbandry and feeding schedules. It also raises implications for the future management of other captive Papio baboon colonies in terms of enclosure redesign. These include the benefit of incorporating naturally occurring environmental factors, such as natural leaf litter. This study is also of value from a management perspective as a baseline for future investigations. Such investigations could include long-term monitoring of this colony's use of environmental enrichment in the new enclosure and consideration of the animals' behaviour as the colony is encouraged to expand.


Abstract First time in this study, thymol was used as organic component for the synthesis of hybrid Cu- nanoflowers alternative to these expensive molecules in a pH dependent manner. Thymol initiated the coordination reaction with copper II ions, which act inorganically in the formation of Cu-NFs. Morphology of thymol based hybrid nanoflowers (T-hNFs) was observed with SEM images (pH 5). The presence of copper II ions, crystal structure and the presence of functional groups in the structure of T-hNFs have been shown by EDX, and FTIR graphs, respectively. Furthermore, T-hNFs were found to have antimicrobial properties (MIC = 25 μg/ml) against fish pathogens. In terms of the catalytic activity of T-hNFs, guaiacol was oxidized to product and its oxidation was reached to saturation point in 90 min by increasing absorbance point from 0.01 (first 5 min) to 0.031(at 90 min) with 3 fold increase.


Objective: The myokine irisin has been proposed to affect obesity and metabolism dis-orders. However, data about the association of irisin with obesity and glucose metabolic status in humans remains controversial, and limited data are available concerning the Chinese population. This study aimed to evaluate the association between serum irisin concentrations and obesity, as well as glucose metabolic and cardiovascular factors in the middle-aged physical activity-matched Chinese Han race population. Methods: A total of 740 participants were included in this cross-sectional study, who were divided into a normal weight (NW) group, overweight/obese (OB) group, normal weight type 2 diabetes (DM-NW) group and overweight/obese diabetes (DM-OB) group, and physical activity was evaluated and matched for the four groups. Circulating irisin levels were analyzed and compared among the groups with different adiposity and glucose status. Linear regression analysis was performed to test the relationship between serum irisin and adiposity indices, glucose metabolic and other cardiovascular risk factors. Results: Circulating irisin levels were significantly correlated with higher levels of direct and indirect adiposity markers, including BMI, waist circumference and fat mass, and other cardiovascular risk factors, such as plasma triglyceride and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol level (p < 0.01). Diabetes patients had lower irisin levels compared to non-diabetes participants, in either normal weight and obese group, resulting in a correlation of irisin with HbA1c, HOMA-IR and HOMA-IS (p < 0.01). Linear regression analysis demonstrated that irisin serum concentrations were independently associated with sex, BMI, HbA1c, HOMA-IR and HOMA-IS (R 2 = 0.465). Conclusion: These data indicated that circulating irisin was affected by adiposity and glucose metabolism condition in the middle-aged Chinese population. The increase of irisin under conditions of obesity may indicate its physiological function to improve glucose tolerance which is often impaired in obese subjects, but this compensatory secretion of irisin seems likely to be progressing to a secretion failure once diabetes developed. WC, waist circumference; SBP, systolic blood pressure; DBP, dialectic blood pressure; Fins, fasting plasma insulin; FPG, fasting plasma glucose; HOMA-IR, homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance; HOMA-IR, homeostatic model assessment of insulin sensitivity; LDL-C, low- density lipoprotein cholesterol; HDL-C, high-density lipoproteins cholesterol.


The use of incitement programs and share-based programs in particular has increased since the 1980`s. These share-based programs are used to encourage the employees to actively participate in increasing the company's result. The payment in these share-based compen-sations either is; call options, subscription options, synthetic options or convertibles.From January 1 2005, the new accounting regulation IFRS 2 regarding share-based pay-ments are implemented. The IFRS 2 demands all companies noted on a stock exchange in the European Union to account for the share-based payments and expense these in the in-come statement. Before this implementation, these payments only had to be described in a disclosed form. However for the year 2004, the effects due to the IFRS 2 have to be taken into consideration in the income statement. The reason for this is that potential investors must have the possibility to compare the financial statements between different time peri-ods.The purpose with thesis is to cover what effects the companies' on the Swedish A-list should have had if the IFRS 2 were implemented already the year 2004. Secondly, the aim is to cover and describe the utilization of share-based programs among these companies and to explain how they are affected.The thesis is conducted through a quantitative approach and based on secondary data from annual reports of the companies'. Our selection is the total population on the Swedish A-list.The conclusions made in our thesis are that the majority of the A-listed companies' use some kind of share-based programs. The most frequently used option type is the subscrip-tion option. On average, the decrease in result was 0,89 percent due to IFRS 2. On average the dilution effect due to the use of share-based programs decreased the result per share by 0,54 percent. The companies on the A-list use the Black & Scholes formula to valuate the share-based payments. Our study also indicates that the companies using call options should have experienced the greatest result decrease due to the IFRS 2. Another interesting conclusion is that the larger companies in our study are most likely to involve all the em-ployees' in the share-based programs while the smaller companies prefer to only involve executives and other leading personnel.


Enhancing student engagement has been a goal of increasing importance in higher education.  This may be especially valuable in online courses, where face-to-face interactions and synchronous activities are often minimal or nonexistent. Students are thought to be engaged when they view course activities as meaningful, persist in the face of difficulties or obstacles, and wish to learn to achieve mastery of the material (Bomia et al., 1997; Schlecty, 1994). Given the importance of student engagement for effective teaching, it is important for instructors and course designers to understand the factors that foster engagement within the learning environment. The present study sought to measure and compare student satisfaction and engagement in online vs. face-to-face sections of Physiological Psychology taught in Spring and Fall 2015. An end of semester survey, adapted from the literature (Dixson, 2010; Ouimet & Smallwood, 2005), included 18 questions relevant to learner satisfaction, motivation and engagement.  The preliminary data analysis was based on Spring 2015 data collected from 56 students total (22 online, 34 face-to-face).  The findings indicated that there was no statistically significant difference between the online and face-to-face sections for student learning satisfaction and overall engagement levels. Results suggest that online teaching and learning can be comparable to the face-to-face environment on these parameters. More complete analysis of the data from the Spring, Summer, and Fall 2015 semesters, as well as a discussion of implications for course design, will be presented. Faculty and course designers will learn about strategies for measuring and promoting student engagement within their own courses.